Quick Thoughts

I've been busy as a one-armed paper hanger, as is typical of this time of year, but I wanted to brag a little (who, me?!?!) and also share a couple of thoughts I've been having as the summer starts to wind to a close.

First of all, um, PEACHES?!? Even I was shocked. I planted two "semi-dwarf" peach trees a few years ago. Two years ago we picked about 20 peaches. Last year the spring weather was such that ALL the flowers died and we got no peaches at all. Meanwhile, one of the trees has grown to its full size while the other is still a runt. (Long story, not exciting.)

So the large tree was loaded with peaches this year. You may recall my ruminations on thinning the peachlets, when my wife wasn't around to complain. And even though I tried all sorts of techniques to ward off the squirrels, they still were in there on a daily basis, sometimes just taking a bite and leaving the darling peach ON THE TREE! (Grrr!) Still, after all was said and done, I stripped the tree last Sunday and ended up with over a BUSHEL of peaches. Really. I weighed them. Fifty-five pounds!

The picture is of the pretty ones, the ones I didn't immediately make into peach jam and peach cobbler the day they were picked. Still a boat load of peaches. The trick, then, is to make sure they get eaten or baked into something or frozen or canned before they go bad. MAN this harvest season has been killer!

So lots of fun. And thanks for letting me brag. But there is a moral in there. It's fun to garden, and fun to watch all your hard work come to fruition...then there's MORE hard work, to make sure it doesn't go to waste. When I say that you have to think about what you want to eat before you plan a garden, this is part of the puzzle!

Having said that, there were a few things I grew this year for the first time and I thought I'd let you know which ones worked out well and which ones were things I certainly will NOT try again.

Although I am a firm believer in growing my own peas and beans because they are SO much better fresh (even when I let them dry, and cook them a couple of months later, they're much better than what you find on the grocery shelves), I can now definitively say that I will never grow chick peas or edamame again. I'll leave those to the professionals. They took lots of space, they were rather finicky to grow, and the resulting crops were disappointing to say the least.

On the other hand, having never even cooked a tomatillo in my life, I decided to try them this year. The results are impressive, to say the least! They do do MUCH better per plant when you grow at least two of them next to each other (my three in a row were MUCH happier than the two that were about 15 feet apart), but other than that I'm fairly sure you can't kill them. And the tomatillos themselves are delicious, versatile, and easy to preserve. I'm sold!

I also tried to start some out-of-the-ordinary flowers from seed this year. Even the calandule, which eventually gave me some lovely flowers and turned into quite a pretty plant, took FOREVER to get started. Now I know why nurseries charge as much as they do for annuals. In fact, they are probably saving me money in the long run!

So those are my thoughts for today. I need to get back to work. Those peaches aren't going to process themselves!