Saturday, September 3, 2011

late to the garden party

once again, just when it seems like every other gardener in blogland is resignedly hinting about wrapping up their summer crops, mine are finally hitting their stride.

september is the most productive time of year in my garden. i can count on at least another month (or, if this year follows last year’s weather pattern like it has so far, two and a half more months) of good growing weather.

today i pulled in three zucchinis, two cayennes, first two tomatillos, ground cherries, countless tomatoes and a full pound of colorful bush beans. seven pounds of tasty treats in total.

these tomatillos were supposed to be purple. i have three plants and they all look completely different--the bush these came from is low and huge and sprawling, with no purple coloration anywhere:

another is tall and lanky with some purple in the veins of the husks (so i think that means the fruit will be purple), and the third one has a growth habit that’s somewhere between the other two but the husks are about three times the size of the others, differently shaped and darker green. is it possible i got three different cultivars out of three plants, from seeds that were all supposed to be a single type?

side note about tomatillos: i’ve never seen bees go so crazy over vegetable flowers. these plants are constantly humming--i’ve even watched bees fly right past blooming borage to get to tomatillo flowers. anyone who wants to attract bees should grow some of these.



5 comments:

Goneferalinidaho said...

Wow, my garden never hit "full stride" this year. Bugs ate everything right away and all our plants have suffered except for the tomatoes which were really late. Cool side note is that we have started saving our own seeds and we have some to share at the next year's seed swap. I am so happy to see that your garden is doing so well.

Emily said...

that's awesome about the seed saving. i saved a whole lot of a couple different things so i would have big tubs of seed to bring in, but i'll save some tomato seed too, there just won't be as much.

i'm sorry to hear about the bugs. that plus the storm/branch catastrophe equals some pretty shitty luck.

Bumble Lush Garden said...

Lucky you for getting extra harvest time. You're getting so much! Our tomatillos attracted a lot of bees too, it was great. I think I counted up to five different bee varieties! Is that your pup in the last picture? What a cutie!

Emily said...

yep, that's my munchie. he's my little garden helper. luckily he doesn't like to eat anything i grow, and he's very good about staying out of the beds. he just tags along and watches me garden.

The Stay @ Home-Gardener said...

Awesome harvest. :)