Monday, July 28, 2008

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you

the vegetables of late late summer!Actually, Buffy emailed and asked...'did the okra make it?' Buffy knows now, after having helped with the garden all season long, that sometimes you get a whole lot of something, and sometimes things don't work out. She and I had set out the okra plants more than a month ago....it takes a while with okra....of course, once it begins to 'make', picking is an everyday affair and is not optional! So, after doing some weeding this morning, I thought I'd wander over there and check out those rows. I mean, the plants are still very low to the ground - probably no more than two feet tall at most. So, I thought, I'll just take a peek. good thing. I wound up picking almost a full bucket...bending and cutting then standing and leaning back - that's a lot of bending down. And, even though you wear gloves; if you are stupid enough to not wear a long-sleeved shirt, which I didn't - you have your own version of the Itchy and Scratchy Show.
As to the field peas (yum), they have set and ripened with amazing speed...we put out a call to customers only last Thursday, letting them know that 'UPick' was what was going to be happening with the field peas (and got quite the response! folks seem ready and willing to wade out there and pick). ok. Here's a picture from last week...I tried to take some this morning, but the sun was too high at that point.
Without long pants on, there was no way I was going to make my way through the peas. The two rows are completely grown together in the middle, and they are butressed on one side by massive numbers of zinnias (full of bees of course) and on the other by big bushy trailing eggplants. No room to walk in between anything. Of course, it can be done; bt there is potential peril (wasp nests maybe, bees, and since Will completely cleared around the pond this weekend, maybe a snake, who knows? uh-uh. not this morning. But I got enough for dinner before I chickened out. Ah yes. Field peas and fried okra. ps: there's a watermelon in the fridge too. Actually, two. First ones.

6 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting the fig picture. I've been trying to grow figs in northwest Arkansas for 15 years, and I've probably eaten 3 figs off my fig "bush." It dies back to the ground every winter, but comes back growing great guns in the spring and puts on figs, but they never mature! I grew up in north Louisiana and so miss standing under the fig tree and eating figs -- the only proper way to eat a fig!

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  2. ding!ding!ding!
    you win the prize - you are correct!
    that is the only proper way to eat a fig!...by they way..do your figs not mature because they don't have enough time before the cool weather? Is it getting enough water? Every fall, we pile great mounds of hay up on our fig trees. this is good protection from the winter...you may want to try that.

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  3. I don't think the season is long enough. I've tried building a cage around the tree in the fall and mulching heavily, but it didn't seem to do any better those years than the years that I did nothing at all. But I'll try increasing the water. It has never looked stressed, so I haven't had it on my watering routine since it was a youngling. It's a brown turkey, recommended for cooler climates (at least cooler than La). A fellow at the local farmer's market says I should try a Russian, that he has good luck with it. I plan to set one out this fall.

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  4. you know, I talked to Will about this: he's convinced it's the cold...and that even more mulching would help. Do you mulch with hay? or something else?

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  5. A combination of leaves and hay inside a "cage" made of fence wire. Maybe if I went to straight hay? The catalog I ordered from recommended cutting it back each fall, mulching, and wrapping with tar paper. I've never gone quite that far, as we don't have much snow here. I've also thought about trying a tree near the brick south wall of our home, the warmest spot on the place. What do you think?

    When we lived in northeast Arkansas, I had an older friend from Georgia who said he had managed to grow pretty much everything in Arkansas that he grew in Georgia, but that he had never been able to get a fig to live for more than a few years.

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  6. hi guys - we REALLY wanted to come visit you today but you were closed...and no answer on the phone and no sign on the gate. =( i have one very disappointed three year old who would love to come out and see how vegebubbles really grow - is there a place we can look to see what weekends you're open? thanks so much!

    liz and carly fischer

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