Hopeful About Hanna

I wasn't sure if I was even going to go out in the garden today. Hanna is coming up the coast and the forecasters were telling me it was going to rain all morning. It started raining at 5am this morning and kept it up for a couple of hours. Then it stopped. So I ran out to pick my raspberries for breakfast. Then the sun started coming out. Hmm where is my day long rain? We really need it. It was been three weeks since the last rain here. They are still promising at least 2-3 inches tonight though. I'm hoping we get enough to soak the ground again.

In the veggie garden the fall vegetables are growing well. My peas have hit the top of the trellis at 6' tall. I never know what to do with peas when they get to the top. Should I cut the tips off to get them to branch? Or should I just let them spill over? I've seen people make really tall trellises, but I don't want to do that. I'm only so tall. As it is, picking the peas at the top is hard enough. I could just imagine trying to jump up and pick peas. And the peas are really starting to come in. Before it was just one or two a day, but now I get a handful every day and more plants are starting to blossom.

I did find one plant that is setting thicker pea pods. I'm hoping that is a snap pea that survived rotting and not some mutant snowpea. I'll let it fill in the pod and find out. Eating it is the only way to know for sure. Ok I confess. I could follow the tangle of vines down and see which side of the trellis it was planted on, but where is the fun in that?

If you look in front of the peas you will see three rows of carrots. The ones right under the peas are struggling. They didn't come up well and I kept trying to reseed, but some spots just didn't take. Then the slugs chewed off the whole top of one of the carrots. They weren't chewing the tops, they were chewing the carrot itself not far under the ground. They hollowed out a huge section of the carrot. Very bad slugs. I don't usually slug hunt in the carrot bed, but I think I'll have to start. The other two rows farther to the front are doing very well. After four seedings I have all the bare patches covered. Now they just have to grow.

The broccoli under the row cover is surviving. Most of them have recovered quite well from their bout of slug and caterpillar damage. They have grown big enough to survive it all, but one poor little one got too far eaten down. It may not recover fast enough to produce before winter hits.

Today's menu item was swiss chard. It has grow so slowly this year. It finally had those huge wonderful leaves. The fourth wave of leaf miners are just hitting, so it was a good time to take the best plant and harvest the leaves. I didn't pull the plant out when harvesting. I just chopped off all of the big leaves. It will survive to produce more leaves later. But it gives me so much less area I have to search for leaf miner eggs - not to mention a very tasty lunch of olive oil, garlic, Thai chili sauce, lime juice, pinto beans, tomatoes, eggplant, cheese, and of course chard. Next time I'll have to remember that black beans would go better than pintos for this dish.