The Fruits of My Labor

The tomatoes are coming on strong. We’ve had to stake some of the tomato cages with 4' lengths of rebar because the plants are so big and loaded that they are pulling over the cages. I don’t prune my tomatoes, mostly because I can’t ever remember to do so. I hate to imagine how the tomatoes would retaliate (like the grapes) if I actually got around to pruning them. Growing them on pig manure seems to be sufficient for excellent production.

Tomato harvest will be an ongoing series of surprises because I can’t remember what I planted. I put the old standby varieties—Oregon Star and Cherokee Purple—near the front of the bed, and the only cherry tomato I planted was the Blue Boar Berry started from seed I scooped out of a tomato that had spent the winter on the ground. That BBB plant is producing like mad and I’ve already snacked on some of them. Eveything else is a mystery unless I crawl around on the ground and search for the tags.

The forecast for the next couple of weeks, at least, is for highs in the 80s and lows in the 50s. I am optimistic about getting ripe pumpkins and butternut squash. The beans are close. This is a pod of Emmalou’s Golden dry beans that I cracked open yesterday:

I cleaned off the Lodi apple tree yesterday morning. I have been watching that tree like a hawk because Lodi apples are like spinach, with an approximate five-minute window when they are perfectly ripe. Lodi apples are thin-skinned—no peeling necessary for pie filling—and don’t store well. I had exactly enough apples for one canner load of seven quarts and a fresh pie for the husband.

The Lodi tree has produced in the past, but not as heavily as it did this year. The apples were nearly perfect. They had no bug damage. Everyone says it’s because the insects haven’t found the trees yet, but I think it’s because I don’t spray. I’ve never treated my trees with dormant oil or anything else. Some of those trees have been out there for over 10 years. Unless all the insects in the neighborhood are incompetent, I think they would have found them by now. In any case, I don’t plan to change what I am doing. I often think that sprays are like antibiotics—all they do is select for the strongest pests.

The Honeycrisp trees and the Red Wealthy produced a few apples, but they are not quite ready yet. Most of the apple trees took the year off or only produced lightly.

I also rotated stock in the pantry and made room for the quarts of salsa and tomato sauce that I’ll be making.

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I’m going to work outside this morning, but I’d like to sew this afternoon. I want to start putting the I Spy quilt together. Searching my stash for fabrics for that quilt has been great fun. The only fabric I had to buy was an X-ray print for the letter X, and fortunately all the Halloween fabrics are on sale at Joanns.

I stopped in at Hobby Lobby and bought enough of the blue quilted fabric for a jacket as it was on sale this week. I’ll order zippers next. I’ll probably also make a muslin of that pattern in fleece to test out the fit.