The gardens this year have largely been a disappointment. Crops like the potatoes, cucumbers, zuchinni, butternuts, pumpkins, and beans have either refused to fruit or curled up and died due to that extreme heatwave we had. But the aubergine, beetroot and capsicum all in the drought resistant frog garden are doing very well.
Now that it is cooler, and it is delightfully cooler with the temperatures for the next ten days forecast to be in the eighties we have begun to replant. Once again gardening is a joy and ever so slowly little showers of rain are popping in to visit. We had a squall that arrived when we were out yesterday evening. All the windows and doors were open as usual and we came home to a rain soaked bed and puddles on the kitchen floor. Lamps were blown over, every window sill on that side was cleared as a few screens were blown in but luckily the mattress has a sheepskin cover so it was not soaked through. No-one minded mopping that rain up!! It was a good drop!
Anyway lets have a wee look at the garden. These gorgeous things are Post Indicator Valves. John brings me rocks from work sometimes or he brings me fire hydrants, some of which are very old and the other day he brought me another one of these. The one in the foreground is quite old. They have been made from the same mould for almost a hundred years but are all dated. I have no idea what these do so don’t even begin to ask me. I just like the colour and their lovely strong shapes in the gardens. 
Some men bring flowers!! 
The tomatoes are the best crop so far this year. The crockpot has been going almost 24 hours a day for a few weeks now, making summer sauce, and there is more to come. I make the sauce in tiny batches with whatever I pick that day, last night as I wrote 4 jars of summer sauce were jiggling in their water bath. Wonderful. 
My grapes are rocking along. They don’t mind it dry. These are the Vidal Blanc, they are the wine grapes and we will have a great crop this year. Touch wood. (We should call this blog Touchwood-I have you guys doing it with me so often!!) There were almost no Japanese Beetles out here this year and this has made a fantastic difference to the grapes. There is a marked lack of bugs this year. I have not seen any mosquitos.
How about this for optimism. Remember how Our John put his tomatoes in early predicting an early spring? Now I find he has started reseeding summer crops in the middle of summer. Is he looking for a long summer or a long mild autumn?
I hope so. The late summer crops are being sown too. Cabbage and brocolli mainly. More lettuce soon and cilantro and beans. My summer beans have been rubbish so far. May as well pop in some more and see what happens.
Good morning. I have a rain gauge now, thanks to my kindly neighbour, and yesterday evening it had measured 3/10ths of an inch, with another tiny shower during the night. Another little gift. We are very cool today with a high of 77. I had planned to take in the rest of the honey this week but as I don’t have an extractor, I need the honey to drip out into the buckets and for that to happen it needs to be hot! Brilliant problem! But the cool is perfect cheese making weather. And so stress free.
We will wait for the honey. I love this cooler summer weather.
You all have a lovely day.
celi
what we were doing exactly a year ago – sustainable, what does it mean?. I am not very fond of labels. Being organic, or vegetarian, or bio dynamic or natural or whatever. I wriggle under the constraints of other peoples rules. Every one of these clubs has a list of don’ts. I do prefer to just do what we can and roll with life. Quietly discover who we are. I try to explain this here. If this were rewritten in a more intelligible way this should probably be in my opening chapter of the Farmy book. See what you think.
c
The Kitchen's Garden 
62 responses to “The Kitchen’s Garden Garden!”
Hoop houses work really well, if you are up to trying them. If you want to build them tall enough to stand in I then use(d) plastic (the very thickest that I could find) and make a room. The heat from the sun warm up everything until late January then the cold got the greens. HOWEVER they just went dormant so come the warm up in March I had EARLY stuff to put on the table.
Now I just cover the hen run and forget the gardening…rather lazy of me I know.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
http://deltacountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com
Love the post indicator valves. They look like slender letterboxes, awaiting weather requests. Maybe they have been encouraging the tomatoes, being the same colour.
Good on you for trying another planting; you might just get away with it. The rain and cool must be so welcome. We have a heavy rain warning here (again), but we will leave some for you.
Thank you for letting a little rain carry on! and fantastic comparison to slender letter boxes, I knew they looked familiar!! c
I agree, very strange year in the garden–some things did horrible! Yet, I’m having the best peppers I have ever grown! They struggle early and just have grown and continued to produce.
🙂
Fantastic to have a surprise crop! What are you doing with all those peppers? c
I’d take your labelling cue from Food, Photography& France’s, comment: wonderful, wondrous 🙂 I love your Post Indicator Valves, so much better than a bunch of flowers. The G.O. often brings home things off job sites, from small – old bottles, bits & pices, coins & marbles he digs up, to large demo site goodies – tables, water bubblers, building materials, and alive – a tiny kitten (who went to cat rescue as she was so tiny & we have no vet nurse skills or space 😦 )
wow, he sounds like quite the fella to keep around!! c
Love the look of THOSE tomatoes and the grapes: wow! Love the ‘reads’ from around the world too and am slightly [and sweetly!] amused when someone says there is a heatwave when the temps are in the upper 70s 🙂 ! They surely would have a bit of a problem when Sydney figures hit 100-104 degrees plus 🙂 ! Methinks ‘bluejellymidge’ in Madrid would understand!!
Men who bring home only flowers may be lacking in imagination. (Cyclo, back from London for a day off from being an Olympic Gamesmaker bought me a poetry book 🙂 )
Despite the mess, hooray for rain! (We have heatwaves of high 70s too, this is England, 80 is a freak occurrence which has all passing out!) I’d accept flowers but those post things are very cool, they look pump-y. 🙂
Love your spirit, C! Just mop it up and go on! Sometimes blessings come with a small price 🙂 I’d take a bouquet of tomatoes over roses any day! Especially garden fresh!
What a cool post. We’re getting a cool front, only mid 90s for the high today! Seriously. We might do dinner on the porch.
No garden for us this year C, so of course I’m jealous…even if things haven’t been perfect.
We had a similar season. This was my first time ever growing a garden in my life and a lot of the local pros have told me this season wasn’t a good one. So I’m a bit relieved it wasn’t all my fault. Our tomatoes are doing good too. Cucumbers and squash…eh…
Sad to start on a rotton year, maybe next year will be better! c