So back to your regularly scheduled program in the vegetable garden today. When I was out picking I noticed my poor cucumbers were very much dying. I will spare you the ugly photo. I still picked a few cukes off of them, but the foliage is mostly gone. Just a handful of leaves on each plant. I may eek out a couple more, but I think I've made my last container of dill pickles. The big dill is gone too. I have lots of little seedlings that growing everywhere, but not big enough to harvest. They self seeded from this years dill flowers.
More carrots are getting to harvestable size. I picked three more today. The ones that were at least 4" from the others are doing fine, but if they were closer they are still small. There were a couple of strong seedlings that were a couple inches apart that I left. I'd harvest one small, but I know it would disturb its neighbor. I'll just have to hope they get bigger. This time I didn't have those ugly forked roots. One was pretty short though. I assume they are ready when their width gets large. I have no way of telling if they have filled out all the way underneath.
My biggest harvest was my basil. It had once again filled in with new leaves. Next year I have to remember not to put in so many basil plants. I have three Thai basils (which I'm trying to collect seed from, but I think I let it flower too late) and I really only need one. One lemon basil, just the right amount. And had seven Italian basils which is way too many. I pulled three of them up a while ago, but kept four. Four is still too many.
I picked tons of Italian basil to fill my skirt. I have plenty of frozen basil already. So I decided to dry this batch. There is nothing better than turning on the dehydrator and smelling basil all day long. Yumm. There was a lot. It filled all but one shelf. I didn't take each leaf off one by one. I just threw the branches in and dried them that way. Crumbling them into the spice jar was a real treat. The clovelike scent was very strong. I hope it keeps, but that wonderful scent doesn't tend to last long. I never get it from store bought basil.
I did the same thing with lemon basil last week and the house smelled wonderful.
ReplyDeleteI can not tell you how green with envy I am right now. My basil was the saddest thing this year. I NEVER have bad luck with basil but this year it was just plain sad. For the first time in years we were not able to enjoy a bounty of pesto. Well, at least there is always next year.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about your cucumber plants. It seems like you got quite a yield off of them this year though.
ReplyDeleteWahoo for the carrots - they look MUCH better than the last ones.
That is a LOT of basil, a lot of it. I have two containers that I have started to grow indoors over winter. Pesto made from garden basil in winter sounds fantastic. I bet your house did smell fantastic!
Oh lemon basil must have been wonderful.
ReplyDeleteThat's so sad Cynthia. Basil is so expensive from the store and (usually) is so easy to grow. My years without basil are all from cutworms. The cutworms love to chop them down if I forget to protect them.
Oh yes my cucumbers were so productive this year. I've never had them last to the end of September. They usually die in August sometime. So I was quite pleased.