Catching Up

Whew! 97 degF here in Beverly today. It made me wilt, but the garden is loving the heat.

The farmers' market is over. We did about as well this week as last. Seedling sales are done; we're donating all the remaining seedlings to the Sustainability Guild for use in urban gardens around Dorchester. I just have to do an inventory first so that I can run my expenses properly.

The Great Chile Experiment is begun. I pulled up the peas last week and harvest the last pods, then planted two NuMex Espanola Improved chile peppers in the newly cleared EarthTainer. Then I harvested all the kale from another EarthTainer and planted two NuMex Sandia chile peppers in there yesterday morning. After today's heat, the bush beans finally gave up, so that EarthTainer is next on my list to be cleaned out. I need to select a tomato to go in there, but which one? A Sun Gold, a Juliet, a Stupice, a Valencia, a Brandywine? If I let the kids decide, they'll choose a Sun Gold. I think I'd rather have a Brandywine. They take for-freaking-ever to come ripe in the field. Perhaps they'll be faster in the greenhouse.

The garden is fully planted now. It just needs weeding, watering, and harvesting, which should begin quite soon. The kale is growing full and bushy, and I have teensy 3-inch-long zucchinis. In this heat, they'll be ready to eat in a week. We tried digging for new potatoes on Father's Day, but they're still about the size of the last segment of my pinky finger. I need to bury those potatoes more. Maybe this weekend, when it's cooler.

This evening, I went out to turn on the irrigation and hand water the few areas that don't yet have drip tape or well-developed roots that reach the existing tape, and I discovered that the garden has been colonized by fireflies. So I finished the watering, slapping at mosquitos the whole way, came in, and wrote a poem about it.

It feels like the mad rush of spring is finally over and we can settle into the long summer routine: weed, water, eat, repeat.