August is winding down, and despite the chilly mornings and just faintly warm afternoons we're "enjoying" in Saint-Aignan, the garden is now producing tomatoes and cucumbers. It has already given us, and continues to give us, loads of green beans and summer squash. Before too long, we'll probably get a lot of winter squashes as well.
At least the weather has finally turned dry. Other local gardeners haven't been as lucky as we have. The area just 30 or 40 miles south of here got three times its normal amount of rainfall in July, while our rain totals here were just slightly above average for the month. Granted, the first two weeks of August were extremely wet, but the garden has prospered and a side benefit is that we haven't had to water it very much.
Rainy weather goes hand in hand with chilly weather in this part of the world. There's seldom a rain that feels warm. So everything dries out slowly, and lingering damp on gray days encourages the growth of mold and mildew that ruins crops like tomatoes and grapes. Many summers, it's not warm enough here for crops like eggplants or bell peppers. We'll see if our plants produce any in 2014. At least the garden is green.
By the way, I'm getting pretty good at nine-finger typing. Or, really, six-finger typing, since I type on the left side of the keyboard with five fingers, while on the right side my index finger does nearly all the work.
That's a good-looking harvest! I hope you have plenty of room in your freezer. Isn't everything green for August? The beans and squash have put on a load of massive leaves. The tomatoes seem to be fighting the blight, some varieties better than others (hero-Blue Fruit, zero-Lemon Boy), but the fruit are all coming at once because, like you guys, we've trimmed off so much leaf - no tail-off until October! Our aubergines and possibly the peppers seem to be blight-affected too. Peppers are just ripening, but some fruits have black blisters I've not seen before, and the aubergines have those spots like targets on the leaves. Do you have anything like that?
ReplyDeleteAs I said to Tim on Walt's blog, our sweet bell peppers have blossoms but virtually no fruit. Same with the eggplants.
DeletePretty much the same in England, chilly for August. And wet. I've never done as well with beans as this year, so something must be going right!
ReplyDeleteYes, the beans are really productive. We will enjoy them all winter.
DeleteI see the tomatoes look good due to Walt's savvy pruning!
ReplyDeleteHope you made it home without too much stress...
DeleteGreat job on the typing front, Ken :)
ReplyDeleteThe bounty looks so fresh and yummy!
You are lucky your garden is very productive.
ReplyDeleteWe have had a pretty nice summer here in British Columbia. The only really hot week, with temperatures in the 40's C, was the week my sister flew up from Los Angeles for a visit. She is used to the heat, since she actually lives in the desert north of LA, but she is also used to central air, which we do not have.
ReplyDeleteLast week I went with friends to pick tomatoes. They were only 50 cents a pound - a real bargain since we are convinced that BC = Bring Cash! I made two batches of spaghetti sauce (one meatless), two batches of pico de gallo, and many tomato sandwiches.
Here in this part of British Columbia, the Okanagan Valley, a major crop is cherries. If cherries get too much rain, they split open and cannot be sold. The owners rent a helicopter at $1000/hour to hover over the trees to dry the cherries.