When tomatoes attack

Today my car spent the day getting serviced, and the lack of wheels plus the cooler temperatures meant that today was an ideal day for doing some housekeeping in the planting beds. One zucchini plant was discarded, weeds were pulled, bugs were picked off, and dead leaves were stripped off vines. By far, though, the most time-consuming and difficult task was re-staking and pruning the tomato vines, which had gotten quite out of control. Vines heavy with fruit were sagging towards the ground and getting tangled with the other plants, and sucker branches were so dense that air couldn't circulate properly. At one point I lifted up a branch that had obscured one of the cucumber vines and found a ready-to-pick cucumber that I had never noticed before. The very hot weather that lingered for over two weeks has  kept me pretty much out of the garden, but now the plants are thinned, staked, and tidy.

In the meantime, Miss Claire has a new homesteading project: yogurt! She's come into a yogurt maker and at this moment there's a quart of the stuff cooking. We've got some raspberry and peach jam leftover from last summer's canning experiment, and I bet it will be fabulous mixed in!

What I picked today: a few green beans, one zucchini, and a cucumber.
Ready soon: corn, tomatoes, spaghetti squash

Theme of the day:

Growing Hope

It's been much too long since I last posted, which is never a good idea for a blog just getting off the ground. I've actually been away at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, and although I had a great time and learned a tremendous amount about how my church governs itself and makes decisions, I also spent 10 days in a hermetically sealed, over-air conditioned environment that not only cut me off from being outdoors but helped bring on a nasty summer cold.

Despite the sniffles and sneezes, I spent yesterday afternoon with Bill and Billie Hickey of the Detroit Bioneers. The Hickeys are champions of the urban sustainability movement, having moved to the Brightmoor neighborhood of Detroit about two years ago with the intention of taking part in community  building and food justice through urban farming. Brightmoor is a blight-ridden neighborhood with high unemployment and many abandoned buildings, but there is also a spirit of hope here through the urban gardening initiatives that have taken hold. After a delightful lunch, much of which came from the community garden that the Hickey's have planted, we toured the neighborhood and had a good look at the backyard gardens, community plots, and pocket parks that now dot the area.  Despite my raging cold I was thrilled to see all that's been accomplished here and how growing food and tending animals have given this community not only a sense of pride, but access to healthy food and some economic independence as well. To read more about the Brightmoor urban farming project, clicky here.

In the meantime, my own garden is really pushing out the green beans and zucchini. The tomato vines are heavy with green fruit, the spaghetti squash are coming along nicely, and the first stalks of corn are starting to appear. Unfortunately, the resident groundhog has been enjoying the watermelon and cucumber vines and I'm not sure how well the plants will recover. I'm trying not to get too worked up about it because animals will do what they do, but it is a bit frustrating to see all my hard work get eaten up by critters.