Lemon Pickles and Onion Harvest

 Lemon Cucumber Pickles, canned last week. It's a new recipe and I haven't tasted them yet. The Boothby's Blonde cucumbers seemed to break down too much or I cut them too thin. I mixed about 3 varieties of cukes into the batch. But I've found I really like zucchini pickes and they are usually easier to grow. For my cukes I had lots of flowers and not so much fruit. Then the cucumber beetles came with the accompanying disease. But I also have an abundance of squash beetles this year which aren't doing the zucchini any favors.

 Bob and I have become totally spoiled with the daily garden additions to our lunch salads. Usually it consists of kale, dill, lemon balm and basil. Yum. I wonder which of these I can keep going in the garage studio over the winter. Last winter I had Red Russian Kale and a freckled leaf lettuce, also some tah tsoi. They all did well under the daylight flourescent bulbs.

I planted a variety of 3 types of onions, Walla Walla, Red Zepplin, and Ringmaster (their Northern Collection), this year from Territorial seed. They grew quite well with no diseases of bug damage. Most were average size, but one bulb was a whopping 2 pounds. These were grown from onion sets, not seed.

The tomatoes are finally just starting to ripen. And now we're getting lots of rain. Hopefully it won't harm the tomatoes too much. Last year when that happened a lot of the tomatoes split from too much water too fast. But most are still green enough that maybe it won't matter. 

All in all the gardens have been producing pretty well this year. The only exception being anything that has male/female flowers. I seem to be getting mostly male with little pollinated fruit. Even one variety of dry bean is having flowers but no beans. What's up with that?