The Food Payoff


After a few false starts where I thought my zucchini looked like it was producing only to discover the small zukes had rotted from being unfertilized, I took matters into my own hands...literally. I began taking pollen from the male flower and gently placing it in the female flower with the tip of my finger and tho this made me feel slightly dirty, it produced some very nice zucchinis.


Stalled, sick pole beans
My pole beans were off to a promising start and then they stalled out, turned yellow and then got red edges. They have not grown in weeks and I am fairly certain they have a virus or bacteria. I have always planted pole beans and they have always done well. Well, they are dead. Fail.

 Luckily I also planted bush beans in the hoop house so I will still have a few green beans to eat but not the haul I usually get around my bean tee-pee.










The Mini-hoop house experiment has shown me just how much further along heat-loving plants get while sheltered from the wind and in a somewhat controlled area. My outdoor tomato plants are lanky and stringy and worse for ware after the hurricane we had. Whereas the tomato plants that I thought I had killed with too much rabbit bedding in my hoop house, are making a comeback. I already have almost mature Jalapeno peppers and the eggplant and pepper plants are coming. The bush beans have beans on them which I am picking daily. I am expanding my hoop house in the fall because even though we are in a very warm part of the province, we do get a lot of wind being open to the water.

Jungle of tomato plants in the hoop house


I have cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes and the lettuce just keeps on producing. I have harvested most of the Cilantro, leaving some plants to mature and produce seed for next year's crop. I have been drying herbs and storing those for winter including mint for tea, oregano, sage, basil and thyme. I have also been picking mint leaves for Mojitos in the evening. Still using pipe cleaners to tie things up quickly and easily.

Herbs drying in my kitchen



I have planted my broccoli seedlings  for a fall crop,and even tho it is only August, I can't help but feel the race is on to grow some good food before the heat runs out. Our spring meat chickens and rabbits are processed and our final fall batch of meat chickens are tiny and peeping in their pen soon to be food stores for winter. It is busy and satisfying putting food away for winter...now onto getting firewood.


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