First Tomatoes

The near-100-degree weather of the past two weeks has done a number on the tomatoes. The parts of the fruits that have been turned up to the sun are baked white and may not ever turn red. Pop-Pop suggested that I go ahead and pick all of the tomatoes that are starting to turn and let them finish ripening under the shade tree in his back yard.

Yesterday evening, Joel and I pulled the garden wagon to the tomato patch and started picking. We threw away about as many tomatoes as we kept (the blasted turtles have been snacking), and still had enough tomatoes to cover the top of a picnic table. There are probably enough fully-ripe ones to justify a canning, but they will have to wait until tomorrow, as I am on the third (and, hopefully, the final) day of a monster house-cleaning project.

The okra is barely knee-high, but making enough okra for supper, despite not having had a whipping.

The great northern beans and purple hull peas will need to be picked before the week is over.

The green beans are sitting there, doing nothing, just like they did last year. Over the weekend, I visited some relatives and saw at least a dozen jars of newly-canned green beans on their kitchen counter. When I commented that my green beans weren't making, the husband asked, "Are you fertilizing them well?" I said that I was. "Well, there's your problem," he told me. "Green beans don't like much fertilizer." He also said they don't like this heat. Maybe they will do like last year's crop, and get busy when the temperatures get cooler. Considering that all of the other beans seem to be producing like crazy, it may be a blessing in disguise that the green beans are bucking the trend.

Two days ago, I harvested enough cucumbers for Nanny to make a batch of her delicious cucumber relish. She can have all of the cucumbers this year, as far as I'm concerned; I made too many pickles last year, and still have enough left to get us through next year.

The pods on the yard-long beans are 18" long and still growing. My sunflower-stake idea is not working. The sunflower plants at each end of the bean row are growing tall and thick, but the ones planted between the bean plants are spindly, barely taller than the beans, themselves. (The idea might have worked if I'd given the sunflowers a two-week head start.) But the bean pods are happily coiling on the ground, seemingly unconcerned about having anything to climb. It may be a b*tch to shell a spiral bean, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

---------------