Everything's Coming up Lettuce!

Well, not everything is lettuce. The picture to the left is of radishes. But the lettuce, peas, beets, and spinach are also coming up!

It's funny how anxious I feel after I've planted seeds, checking each day until I finally see the seedlings poking their tiny heads through the soil. In many cases, it's difficult to tell whether the slight bit of green I see is the actual plant or weeds growing in the recently tilled soil. Now that the early crops are planted, it's time to turn my attention to some of the other planting that needs to be done.

For instance, it's time to plant the seedling tomatoes--the Sun Sweet and Super Sweet cherry-size tomatoes, the Big Beef, and the Best Boy tomatoes from the local community college's horticulture program.

I also have a lot of other seeds to plant and seedlings to grow; hopefully we'll get some dry weather soon so I can do that!

Meanwhile, I will just have to be content with harvesting the runaway mint that lives in our yard and the volunteer dill that is coming up in the part of the garden I have not yet tilled.

Slug-Bitten Cucumbers

This evening's harvest was amazing: 10 zucchini (half reasonably sized, half giganticus), a handful of mint, a handful of cilantro, 2 Beefsteak tomatoes (worm riddled in sections; I'm going to try to cut those sections off), 63 sun sugar tomatoes, and 19 cucumbers!

I have a drawer full of cucumbers in the refrigerator that need to be cleaned and pickled, so I will probably work on that tomorrow. I need to finish shredding and chopping the zucchini, and I'll probably take some cukes, zukes, and tomatoes to work tomorrow to share with others.

I find it interesting to compare the cucumbers that have ripened on the ground and the ones that have ripened hanging in the air. After the cucumber plants had grown quite a bit, I trained some of the tendrils to climb some trellises I bought at a discount at JoAnn Fabrics. I worried that the cucumbers would be too heavy for the vines and fall off as they grew, but thankfully I have seen no evidence of that.

I have noticed lately that some of my cucumbers are sporting a lot of scarring, particularly on one side. Tonight, I realized that the cucumbers that are ripening on the ground are the ones with the scarring, which appears on the ground side. My guess is that the scarring is from slugs eating away at the cucumbers. The cucumbers that are hanging from the vine along the trellises and fencing are virtually blemish-free.

The inside is just as tasty, but the outside doesn't look so good, and I'm not sure I should be using the scarred ones for pickles. Instead, I think I'll make an Italian whole-wheat pasta salad and peel the scarred cucumbers and cut them up for that. I can use the sun sugar tomatoes I've harvested as well as some of the green onion I froze.

If you have any ideas for recipes that include skinless cucumbers, please post them! Next year, I'll start training the cucumbers right away to the trellises so all of the cukes are hanging--maybe the slugs will starve.

TOTAL PRODUCE COUNT TO DATE:
Zucchini: 79
Cucumbers: 77
White Onions: 1
Yellow Onions: 1
Sun Sugar Tomatoes: 171
Beefsteak Tomatoes: 2 worm-riddled
Herbs: cilantro, mint, dill