16 August 2011

So, in the last few weeks I celebrated my birthday, installed a new sidewalk, rebuilt some of the lake wall that had been caved in by the ice over the winter, split some firewood, did about 12 loads of laundry, mowed hell's half-acre twice, welcomed a good friend back from nearly a year in the land of OZ, and had the teevee on for maybe 6 hours.

The garden is doing all right, except for a serious lack of production from the cucumbers. By this time last year I'd done two batches of pickles and, so far, I've had about six Straight Eights to pick. Not very happy about that. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks. Pole beans are doing well, with three or four pickings so far. The tomatoes seemed to get done in by a run of upper-90 degree days (despite morning and dusk watering); the fruits that had already established have filled out, but many of the leaves went sere and there doesn't appear to be any more flowering for more fruit. I picked (in driving rain, no less) and sauced a bunch of the Roma and Celebrity tomatoes yesterday, actually. Zucchini is trudging along, which I'm a little surprised at because for the past few years it's been done in early by squash borers or blossom-end rot. Bell peppers are probably doing the best of the bunch... which actually might indicate the problem, as they produce peppers best in a low-nitrogen soil. I really need to work on getting the nutrients built back up in this soil, either through natural or other means. Last year, we got some so-called hairy vetch, an over-winter nitrogen-replenishing ground cover that greens up in early spring and you till in before planting your garden, but came to find out in my readings it was too late for it to establish. So, I'll be looking at putting some in late next month after production winds down. Also, I will likely be adding a bag of 10-10-10 fertilizer next spring before tilling. I had thought that adding our own compost and a nice load from the Franklin mushroom farm would be enough, but it clearly wasn't.

There's just so much to do in the summer. 'Course, this year's been more difficult and featured some inhibiting pain/soreness/serious loss of manual dexterity because of a certain event that I must not talk about at this time in a public forum. Mustn't grumble, though. It could definitely have been worse....