Today's harvest

After being on vacation for two weeks, I felt like I needed to go out to the garden with one eye closed and one barely open.  I was scared to see what condition the garden would be in.  I knew that it had been horribly hot, and goodness knows how well weeds love the heat!  Needless to say, the weeds had definitely found home, and we will be working to reclaim a tidy garden for awhile.  I did have some nice harvests though.  I pulled some of the broccoli plants and will have to pull the rest as well.  It has been way too hot for them.  The peas are gone and need pulled as well.

We have plenty of tomatoes to start canning and eating.  There were some cherry tomatoes that did not make it to the picture.  Amazing how good they taste after eating nasty tomatoes the rest of the year.  I may never buy another hothouse tomato again. 

Beets!  They were a bit bigger than I would have liked, but they grew extra long while we were on vacation.  According to what my husband weighed before and after holding the bucket and cutting the stems down, there were nine pounds.  We ended up with eight pints minus what I ate while peeling them.  Yum!  Now to get a second planting in.



Okra update and first harvest

I wish I had gotten the time to take a picture of the okra seeds after their soaking.  We had to get them planted in a hurry prior to leaving on an out of town trip, so I skipped a step.  They started rooting right away in the water/bleach solution.  Who would have thought?  I was hoping for at least one plant so that I could at least keep the seed going since I really didn't think that they would sprout being old seed. 

I thought that I had read somewhere that okra does not transplant well so I had some peat pots in my potting shed and thought that I would try those since I couldn't get them directly into the garden.

 Close ups of okra seedlings.

I had my first harvest from my garden the other day.  Radishes and beet greens.  I radishes and beet greens in my salad last night and they were so good.  My husband thought the beet greens tasted too much like beets themselves (he is not a lover of beets).  I have a lot more thinning to do.  I will have to be looking for other ways to use them also.  I am wondering if they can be cooked like spinach.  I can't see why not. 

I found such an easy way to clean the greens.  I put them in my salad spinner, ran water over them, and them spun them.  No crunchy bits of dirt.  :)