harvesting and working (and those darn SVBs)

We lost yet another work day to thunderstorms last week, but Keff, Noah, and I did get some work time in on the garden on Wednesday.  We weeded, trimmed yellow leaves off tomatoes, cut off leaves with powdery mildew, tied up drooping tomato stems with twine.  I also discovered that our tatume squash have squash vine borers (SVBs), which are one of my least favorite pests.  The SVB moth lays her eggs on the young plants, and when they hatch, the larvae promptly burrow into the stems and grow there.  You can cut them out, but the cure often kills the plant anyway.  We lost about half our squash plants to SVBs.  We'll have to try harder next year to keep them away (it's not easy).

The good news is that we did manage to harvest a bunch of squash and cucumbers.

Here's a photo of the cukes:

The lemon cucumbers are simply fantastic--crisp and light.

The tomatoes are just starting to turn red this week, and I think this rain we're getting with both the tomatoes and the cucumbers (and keep people away from the tomatoes long enough to let more of them turn red).  I picked a lovely red tomato on Thursday from the garden, and it was delicious.  The tomatillos are also starting to set fruit--I love their little paper lantern husks.

Tomorrow is our regular Tuesday workday (maybe the storms won't rain us out), and we'll put up some new signs and keep tying up tomato plants to give them some more support as they sag from all the fruit.