To The Surbiton Manor Born

We are definitely in a draught. Yesterday was the first time in 10 days that we had any rain at all, and it was just a few spits with a big lightning light-show. Not even enough to fill the rain barrels.  For next year:  We probably want to skip the broccoli. Lots of space (16 square feet this year), and harvest was about 1.5 meals. We might want more peppers. Fewer zucchini. Sort of saw this one coming, but it's getting hard to keep up already, and the harvest season is young. More pick & come again greens. More fruit & perennials.  Beans might not be worth the effort. Didn't like them too well this year, and its hard to find anything to do with them. We should grow smaller cucumbers for pickling. The giant English ones just aren't made for that. Also worth noting: bird netting doesn't stop rabbits, and neither do marigolds (which, I'd heard rumor they deter them.) This morning I went out to pick a couple of tomatoes and heard a thumping against the wood of

We've been busy enough collecting vegetables that it has been difficult to find time to update the blog.  It's been cooking hot ('90's) and dry for the last 10 days, and damned if the devil hasn't farted up our nose and set us up for another 10 days of '90's with no rain at all. The wind blew away a miasma of haze from fires out west and in Manitoba and Alberta yesterday. This heat and dry sets us up for a lot of time watering, and the rain barrels are exhausted in a couple of days. To ration the water, I've been filling the rain barrels and then using the watering can to do the beds.  Meanwhile, we've been eating fantastic cucumber and dill sandwiches with dill on them and cream-cheese. We actually had a few pleasant visitors to Steepmeadow the other day who lunched on Steepmeadow produce. Rare indeed have been the visitors to Steepmeadow, what with the lockdown and all.  Tomatoes are just turning over. We're pulling a camo-zucchini a day or so

The giant sunflowers are performing according to plan, rising up over the deck and bringing in the first hummingbird and gold finches.  The garden is now a riot of green, and it is starting to produce actual food.  It seems like the garlic is ready to pull. I've been doing this slowly to make sure that we don't harvest too fast.  It's also time to plan ahead for next year.  We're going to have to try to save some cloves for next year from this year's crop. It turns out that purchasing cloves to plant is pretty expensive. I just spent $90 at Seed Savers Exchange for 20 bulbs to plant in the fall. That's quite a bit. I'd like to plant more, too. So we'll have to keep at least one of this year's crop to put in the ground.  We went on a short weekend vacation, and came back to peas & beans heavy-laden. A giant English cucumber manifested itself in the course of a few days. I swear, I looked away for a minute, and this thing was there: Some of the tom

  These little buggers can hide on you. I had been following the progress of zucchini #1 with great interest, scanning the base of these now massive plants every morning, waiting for harvest day.  Behold, this morning, when I spotted zucchini #2 lurking in the squash bed, out of site, hidden in the thick foliage like a panther, only without the teeth, claws, and penchant for ripping you to shreds.  One must keep a sharp eye. 

  Over the long 4th of July weekend, we put some finishing touches on the hardscape. We must be nearing the end of what we can do with hardscaping.  The squash and pumpkin bed is exploding. I think it is the pumpkins that are trailing vines everywhere and climbing up and over the sides such that it seemed like a good idea to add a trellis to the back of the bed. I did so this morning in the blazing heat. It's 94 degrees and sunny and very humid right now, sort of topping out a long, hot, dry week.  This heat and dryness means that the plants need water, and the single rain barrel was woefully inadequate to the task, empty in a minute.  We've added a second one to the shed at not inconsiderable expense and labor. The shed had no gutter, so I had to salvage one from the gutters we had replaced last summer. It was painted butter yellow, which would have clashed badly with the shed. So it needed to be cut to size, sanded, and painted. It then had to be mounted to the shed. Because