garden food

Picked and ate our first Zucchini yesterday- in choc chip cookies. A half dozen cherry Tomatoes a day, tons are green on the vine. There's enough G Beans ready every third or fourth day for a side dish. The Bell Pepper plant is dropping all its small unformed fruits after the flowers fade- I wonder if it's because there was only one plant, and it didn't pollinate properly?


Pulled up the last of the Lettuce, and Cilantro plants, gathered seed. Saved only the largest seeds off the biggest Cilantro plants. A few still hung up drying. Pulled up the Onions- all the leaves had died off and shriveled, the bulbs were small. Dug up the Potatoes, as those plants looked very sickly or dying. Surprised to find quite a few potatoes, most of them tiny. Both of those- onions and potatoes- I feel like didn't get any more out of the ground than what I put into it. Did I not water them enough? something- anyway, I don't know if I'll grow them again.


There are tiny baby Lettuces growing in all the spots were I had let plants bolt to seed. In a week I'll pull up all the plants for a baby greens salad, and reseed the bed for fall. The Chard is growing back new leaves, where I cut it all down. I was going to reseed that bed for fall, too, but maybe I'll just let it grow back.


I think I have made a discovery- cucumber beetles don't like Cilantro. When cutting up the plants after taking the seeds off, I put the chopped leaves and stems into the small bucket keep on the counter for kitchen scraps. At the bottom was a bunch of (I thought) dead beetles I had dumped out of the gather-jar last night. When I dropped the chopped Cilantro on top, all of a sudden a half-dozen beetles crawled out to the top and tried to fly away. Maybe if I plant Cilantro among the Cucumbers next year, it will deter them from making themselves at home.