This week with a lighter baking schedule I was able to spend some much needed time in the gardens.
Unlike the rest of the country we have not had endless days of heat and sun beating down on us. We had a couple weeks of high temperatures but most of the summer has been very tolerable indeed. The garden hasn't seemed to mind the lack of heat, though we aren't getting more than a few ripe tomatoes yet. The catch-up time this week has been pleasant work with mild 70s temperatures.
We took one evening to harvest the corn. We only got half of the crop we planted since one whole patch of SE corn did not germinate at all during the cold, clammy weather the first week of June. The other patch of tried and true
Peaches and Cream rewarded us with a wheelbarrow load of first ears.
My husband and I prepared the corn for the freezer all by ourselves. No kid helpers around this year, for the first time in forever.
This week I also harvested some massive cabbages. According to my garden notes these are Stein's Early Dutch.
I was worried that they would split before I had time to harvest them but they didn't!
I was also very pleased to see that they had no bugs! No aphids and no cabbage worms, both of which I have always had trouble with. Last year the aphids were terrible on the cabbages. The difference is that this year I did a bit of bug control with a rather surprising method. My daughter, Katie, recommended that I pour diluted raw milk over the plants. I did that a few times and this is the result! I am also pouring diluted raw milk on my first ever planting of brussel sprouts. Right after I planted the starts I heard from my gardening friends that they had given up on trying to grow brussel sprouts because of the incessant aphid problem. We'll see if the raw milk has the same insect repellant effects but so far, so good!
Alyssa took the job of slicing and salting and pounding those cabbages to prepare sauerkraut. She got two crocks out of those three cabbage heads. There are still three more cabbage plants in the garden so I may need to get lots more kielbasa to go with all this kraut.
The trucks loaded with bins of fruit are starting to wind there way around the valley roads towards the packing houses so summer is definitely waning.
