Here’s some corn, squash, and beans, the “three sisters” from my garden (though technically they might be three cousins because I grew them in separate raised beds instead of all together).
I feel fortunate to be harvesting all three of these vegetables from my garden this summer, given that around here even a hint of rain becomes the lead story on the evening news due to the general lack of rain. Imagine how excited the weathermen were this morning when we got about a half inch of rain, at least through the southern half of the county.
I have a kitchen table covered with squash right now and I am also starting to harvest a lot of tomatoes. There are beans and corn and cucumbers in the refrigerator and plenty of peppers still to harvest.
I’m tired of picking beans. I can’t believe after all I have gone through to get a decent harvest of green beans that I am saying that I am tired of picking them. But I am!
Today was so hot that I didn’t even venture out to the garden until 8:30 and even then I worked up a good sweat just picking squash, corn, and tomatoes. I didn’t even look at the cucumbers, peppers, and beans.
When it is as dry as it is, there is a secret to getting a good harvest like this. Do you know what it is? Well, I’ll tell you…
Are you ready for the secret? Really ready?
I need to know you are really ready to know the secret, so here’s a test.
Here are two tomatoes that I harvested this evening.
One of them is ‘Beefmaster’, the other is ‘Jelly Bean Grape’. If you can correctly identify which is which, then I’ll reveal to you the secret behind my garden harvest this very dry, hot year.
Okay, I’ll bite. But I’m almost afraid to say the little one is the Jelly Bean Grape as I’m sure there’s some hitch to this. But in the meantime, here is Something to do with your extra squash. I don’t think you can do anything with the beans except eat them!
LOL I’m almost ready to do a “what the heck do I do with all of these green bean?” post. I’ve even started freezing them to use in soups and stuff this winter.
All us non-veggie-garden gardeners are quietly drooling over your abundance of green beans, Carol. I could happily eat em all! Raw, steamed, stir fried, made into hodgepodge…but I can see it would be no fun harvested veggies in such heat. Hope some cooler weather comes soon for relief.
PS I too think the little one might be jelly bean, but then as a kid, didn’t we all want giant jelly beans?
I recognize the beef-steak tomatoe so the little one has to be the jelly bean. As a jelly bean lover I recognize the shape. I’ve been told to stsy inside today as the heat index will be so high. No problem doing that
Did you bury a jug by each plant so you could do base watering? That is what I did with my tomatoes and I would recommend it to everyone.
Oh, I forgot the obvious since I’ve been doing it since I helped my parents in the garden. Mulch.
weeeell, the big one has nice marbling, so I’d say that’s the beefmaster. Except that the little one looks nothing at all like a jelly bean. But it does look grape-like. Yeah, I’ll go with that.
Congrats on the beefmaster. I’m still waiting for my plus-sized tomatoes.
LostRoses… no hitch, honestly! The little one is the Jelly Bean Grape. And I like your idea of what I can do with the extra squash.
Colleen… I probably should have frozen some of mine, but I gave a lot of them away!
Jodi… The beans are quite good, and quite plentiful this year. We probably won’t get cooler weather until the weekend.
Eleanor… You are right on the tomatoes!
Me… Those are both great ideas, but neither one is really the secret I was thinking of, but both help with the secret.
Molly… Yep, you are right on which tomato is which and I’m sure you’ll have some soon, too.
Thanks all for the comments. Stay tuned for “the secret”.
Carol at May Dreams Gardens
It sounds like they are cousins once removed. 😉 But nice that you have such a great harvest from the beds.
BTW your test is beyond me, way to difficult. 😀