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This past Saturday, the mildew had spread across the patch of summer squash.  While *we* had been careful to avoid watering late evening, to avoid water sitting on leaves not drying off, Mother Nature had no such qualms.  For a week she rained on and off as she pleased, day and night, throwing in a few thundershowers for good measure.  Plus with the high humidity, and therefore a high dewpoint, we surely had leaves soaked in dew every night.

Nevertheless, we benefited significantly from using potassium bicarbonate (couple teaspoons mixed in a few quarts of water — we didn’t add soybean oil because that gummed up the sprayer) to prevent mildew.  Indeed, the cucumber leaves were still free of mildew, and we’ve had a much more abundant crop of cucumbers this year than last.  The winter squash along the fence showed some mildew encroachment, which by today according to our Thursday waterer had spread entirely over that patch.  Interestingly, the winter squash under the beans and corn was still free of mildew. Perhaps yet another advantage of growing the Three Sisters together!

 

 

We harvested the first few ears of our miniature, multi-colored popcorn today. The bad news is that the summer squash has finally succumbed to powdery mildew.

Somehow, I gravitate toward harvesting our bush beans, and a couple of weeks ago, I thought I noticed that they were slowing down, and might be done for the season. 

I mused likewise out loud, suggesting to Elisabeth, one of our chief gardening officers, that perhaps we should pull them and get something else out of the raised plot before it was too late.

Boy, was I wrong. Saturday, I spent more than an hour in that bed, harvesting plump, robust yellow, purple, and green string beans. Yellow has been the star by far this year, IMO, producing the most and the prettiest beans of the trio. Purple seems to produce a lot, but not of great stature, and the greens have just been so-so.

I don’t know how much longer they have to go — my recollection is that they kept producing last year even after our pole beans began bearing fruit. If so, we probably have a few more weeks, since the latter are climbing, but I haven’t noticed an flowers yet.

Today we harvested our first kabocha squash, our first watermelon and our first serious batch of soybeans. If you look closely, you might find the one little sweet juicy delicious slice of watermelon that actually survived the ravages of hungry gardeners to make the harvest photo.

We’ve got a few "tassel-ears" growing in our cornfield. A tassel-ear is a small, fully-formed ear of corn growing out of the top of the plant, without any husk to cover it. Looks a little wierd, but apparently isn’t that unusual. You can find out more about tassel-ears here: http://corn.osu.edu/newsletters/2012/2012-24/201ctassel-ears201d-in-corn. I’m guessing some bird’s going to be real happy to find it.