My little suburban garden has exceeded all expectations of late. The Summer squash continues to produce in large quantities. We have been harvesting all sorts of tomatoes(cherry, brandywine, beefsteak, early girl) of late. It is absolutely incredible how many tomatoes we're harvesting given that we only cultivated 16 sq feet of soil with these plants. This week we have harvested 52lbs of summer squash, 58lbs of tomatoes, and 1 lb of pole beans.
The suburban garden continues to produce in abundant quantities. Lots of summer squash are being harvested. We took in 39 lbs of squash in the last week.
I'm home in PA for this 4th of July weekend. This is summer at it's best. The cheer of sharing a massive garden harvest with family and close neighbors really makes a man feel at peace with the world. As such, an enormous garden harvest is indeed at hand. Most of my crops are bursting at the seams with produce. The squashes, peas, and onions have been yielding prodigious amounts of food. The corn and beans are coming up nicely. Though of course the Japanese beetles are in season again, they have been effectively contained by the design of the garden. Learning from last year's hard experience, I have selected 3 varieties of Eurasian peas, followed by later maturing Eurasian pole beans. Eurasian legumes(peas especially) seems to have an inhibitory effect on these pests. As such there are far fewer of these beetles than last year. The few who are invading this garden have switched to attacking my apple trees though.
The bio-intensive tomato bed seems to have gone crazy with growth. There are green tomatoes everywhere. I estimate that there are over 400 tomatoes growing in the 16 square feet bed. The bio-intensive approach is clearly working very well. Though nothing comes for free, the incredible yield is earned through higher inputs of human labour and water.
The plant polycutures in my garden has attracted a huge variety of insects and birds and reptiles. The incredible diversity of life stood in stark contrast with the monoculture of the lawn grass. I saw lady bugs, spiders, tiger beetle, dragon flies, glow worms, mayflies, gnats, fireflies, soldier beetles, japanese beetles, leafhoppers, preying mantis, ants, aphids, snails, cicadas, rollie pollies, worms, stinkbugs, centipedes. While working in the garden, I saw 2 different kinds of toads chilling in the shade. Blue jays, robins, sparrows, and finches flew around the garden, picking up insects for lunch.
The summer is in full swing in our suburban garden in PA. I have been trying to post last week's garden picks but haven't gotten the opportunity until now. The apple trees have apparently been hit by the Cedar Apple Rust, I have had to apply some organic fungicides to get it under control. The rest of the garden is doing fairly well. The asparagus plants are thriving now, with 5 of the original 7 plants sending up fresh pine tree like shoots..jpg)
The peas are doing very well, now they have grown up to 6 feet tall. All the pea plants are yielding very heavily at this rate. I expect the rate of yield to sustain itself until early august. At any rate, the pole beans that I have sown in succession have begun to establish themselves at the base of the peas.
The Summer squash plants have gone crazy with growth. The entire bed is covered by their broad leaves. Underneath the canopy, there are scores of small baby golden squashes growing.
The tomatoes have been growing vigorously. I have seen over 100 small green tomatoes growing in the bio-intensive matrix that I've set up. One thing that I have noticed is that this style of gardening is very water intensive, even with heavy mulching.
The potatoes are thriving and will be ready for harvest within 2 weeks at the most. I can't wait!
So in any case, I harvested 6 lbs of peas and 4 lbs of onions and garlic shoots.
For Father's day Weekend, I took my parents out for lunch. Afterwards, I went fishing with my old man. Fishing is a great way to bond with one's father. It provides a great sense of continuity as well as free food. In any case, we went to Marsh Creek and went to our business with great vigor. The conditions were perfect for pan-fish, the weather was hot and humid forcing the fish closer to the water surface. We caught 46 panfish, yielding 27 lbs for the freezer and 10 lbs for the compost heap.
I spent half a day on Tuesday riding around the shorelines of Montauk. Everything was so beautiful there, I didn't really want to leave. The effects of the sea air on a hot summer day was quite wonderful. Near the sea, the temperature was in the low 80s versus around 100 degrees inland. At the Montauk downs state park, I gathered some stones smoothed by the sea, they were very intricate looking. I think I shall give a few of them to my friends and turn the rest into amulets.
Near Montauk Point, I saw these strange looking sand dudes. The were basically hills of sand with ferns or perhaps dwarf trees growing all around them. It was like a scene from an alien planet, definitely very interesting. After awhile, I got a bit tired and the damages done to my body over the last 3 days had begun to catch up with me. I assessed the situation and came to the realization that I could not safely go on. My body has been thoroughly devastated. My stock of dried meat and fish were entirely gone and there were no sources of replenishment to be found in Montauk.
I knew that I had little chance of biking another 180 miles back to NYC, so I decided to call it a day and head home on the Long Island Rail. I arrived back home to the Upper East Side on Tuesday evening. And now, I'm still recovering. My legs were at first numb, and then under intense pain all of last night, and are now sore but flexible again.
