PLANNING FOR THE HOOPHOUSE – AGAIN

Finally, our hot spell has broken and our temperatures are normal for this area.  My garden really took a hit because of the heat and I don’t know if it will recover at this point.  Although I have lots of bean plants that are healthy and full of flowers, there have been very few beans.  I suppose that since there are flowers, there will be beans.  I pulled out the early bush beans and only have the pole variety left.  The tomatoes are still going strong, although the bamboo supports fell over in the wind storm.  They are kind of slumped all over the garden, but I am still picking, even though I have to kind of crawl under and through the vegetation.  There is nothing quite like the taste of a warm tomato, fresh picked from the garden.   Mmmmm.  Although I pop them in my mouth while browsing out there, I still have enough to make about four big batches of sauce for the winter.  Peppers are still producing slowly as are the zucchini.  I picked a bunch of acorn squash and haven’t decided just what to do with them yet.  I wish that they were butternut instead.  I guess I’ll have to stuff and bake them one of these days.  Next year I’ll be sure to plant the squash that I really want.  The sunflowers are blooming and they are beautiful waving high in the sky.  That is, before the birds eat their seed heads. 

So as you can see, the garden is pretty much on its own just now, although plans are being made for the hoophouse.  Compost is going into the bed that will hold the hoophouse, getting it ready for October.  The horse down the street has been producing lots of manure and I plan on getting a couple bags for my very own manure pile (my husband will be thrilled!).  I planted spinach, but either it hasn’t emerged yet or the rabbit ate it even before I saw it growing! 

My daughter said that her garden is doing great and she has been picking tons of beans, zucchini, cucumbers and squash.  She lives on the eastern side of the Berkshires and it is cooler there and so she never got the ‘heat stall’ that we had here.  She said that she is still picking lettuce and has picked it all summer long!  I thought that she was lucky until I realized that she will be dealing with winter a month before we do and I will still be picking vegetables when their ground is frozen.  That made me feel a little better.