Mid-Summer Bounty
After feeling very discouraged today’s harvest was way past amazing.
After last week’s disaster with my tomato plants, I was pretty discouraged with the harvest I was expecting from my garden, yet again. Seems since we’ve moved into this house I can’t do anything right to keep a garden going from spring to fall.
Today my garden decided to let me know it’s doing well and producing just fine. I walked out the door to find three melons had dropped from the vine overnight and not one critter had taken a bite out of them. I was shocked. I was going to do some work in another area, but realized I needed to harvest, yet again. There were several cucumbers, a few beans (they’ll get going again once it cools a little bit). Then I started working on the herbs. I have five kinds of basil in my garden; sweet, lemon, licorice, holy and an unknown variety; and I started harvesting each variety. The pile began to grow and grow as I went from one plant to the next. Then I realized that my sage was humongous! I harvested some of that. I cut back some of the old stems of the oregano I transplanted and there were a bunch of new shoots on the top, which I harvested. Then on to the sisho. I harvested just a few branches of that because I didn’t know if it would hold well in water. It’s doing fine.
Last, but not least I turned to my dismal looking tomato plants and found that they were so grateful to be unburied that, although they look terrible, they had plenty of goodies for me to pick.
Here’s a closer look at some of today’s harvest.
From feeling like I had nothing to harvest in my garden, to my kitchen overflowing with goodies. What a pick-me-up if I ever had one. For lunch today I fixed some of our tomatoes and a few of a particular kind of bean that I was doing a test on, plus some zuch (purchased), in a coconut milk/tahini sauce. As seasoning I put in some of every single herb I harvested today and it was fantastic. I topped it off with a handful of fresh yellow cherry tomatoes and it was a meal fit for a king!
From bummed to blissful in one morning’s work.
Have you ever had any surprises in your garden? Has a plant produced when you thought it wouldn’t or maybe you planted something for the first time and it was spectacular? Share your stories and your pics. I’d love to see them.
