Peaches, Onions, Melons, Dehydrating Vegetables and the Death of a Giant

Yellow faced bumblebee on Evening Sun sunflower

Another hot week is over and good riddance! I'm tired of working in a sweat lodge of a kitchen and I really don't need to work on my tan. Plus, I think I'm scaring the neighbors with the clothing that I've been wearing, or, more accurately, the lack of it.

Here is the garden this week 

The peaches are ripe and the tree was loaded with them. It's the biggest crop the tree has produced and I spent the better part of a day getting them processed. Ten quarts of honey vanilla peaches and five quarts of plain ones are ready to remind us of these steamy days in the middle of winter

The onions in the shed were dry enough to string up this week. It was a small crop of good storage onions this year but that was my fault for not keeping them well watered. Next year I'll do better

The melons have several fruits set. Last year was the first time I was successful growing melons. There won't be as many this year but I'll be happy to get any since home grown melons are incomparable to anything that you could buy in the store

With it being too hot to make pasta sauce I've been drying my tomatoes in my food dehydrator. Five pounds of heirloom tomatoes dries down to a mere eight ounces, but that means that the flavor is ten times more intense. Along with dried onions, bell peppers, chillies and garlic, the tomatoes will be ground into a powder to make a highly flavorful seasoning

We had some gusty winds late Thursday and on Friday I found my 10+ foot sunflower knocked down. It's a real bummer, but at least there wasn't any other serious damage

Weekly Harvest: 

21 pounds 9 ounces tomatoes 

7 pounds 2 ounces cucumbers 

1 pound 4 ounces peppers 

38 pounds 10 ounces peaches 

72 pounds 10 ounces plums

15 pounds 12 ounces onions 

1 pound 5 ounces zucchini 

6 ounces basil 

12 ounces beans 

1 pound eggplant 

Yearly Total:

310 pounds 13 ounces