our maine home – zone 5b
Beat the birds to pick this handful of strawberries! This patch has managed to come back from a serious leaf blight. It didn’t do much last year. But this year, it’s looking fresh and green, although a little patchy, and producing fruit!
Is it still mid-August? A lot has happened. We harvested the fava beans on August 11. Had a big party, the third annual, to shuck the beans. I have three small freezer bags of leftovers, which is good. I didn’t take any pictures, unfortunately.
We have picked over 20 pounds of blueberries, all in the orchard except for two containers harvested atop Schoodic. I know that should be quarts, next year I’ll switch to the more typical measurement.
We are still waiting for the Reliance peaches to ripen. Last year they were all taken, probably by squirrels. This year we took more precautions (netting around the trunk). Sam propped up the heavy branches. They have great color, but are still quite hard.
Sam’s working on improving the orchard fencing. Too many deer are getting in there.
He also added two more raised beds in the hoophouse. Over the next few days I’ll plant some fall and winter greens in them. The peppers and eggplants in the older beds are growing but not exuberantly, but the basil in there is doing great. We had to protect those beds from deer who came to munch one variety of pepper when we opened the roof to the sun and rain.
I’m picking green beans almost daily in the main garden. Also sowed some fall seeds in empty spots.
The fava bean area freed up, so we put up a pea trellis there. Also planted cilantro, broccoli rabe, and spinach in that area.
Harvesting lots of food: beets, cucumbers, a few ripe tomatoes, lettuce, escarole, radicchio, carrots, costata romanesca zucchini, kale, chard, dill, artichokes, broccoli, Savoy cabbage, fingerlings, strawberries, blackberries. Coming along: squashes, a few ears of corn, cabbage, soybeans, pattypan squash, lots of tomatoes!
The strawberries have a leaf blight. It’s their second year, they were planted in April 2018. The variety is Albion, from Fedco, an ever bearing variety.
It’s been a wet spring this year, a lot of rain, which may have encouraged the fungus.
Sam put down alfalfa pellets, thinking the extra nitrogen might help them.
Today, I weeded the whole bed. Then I decided to pick off most of the leaves including some of the dead ones on the ground, I didn’t eliminate the blight by any means, but we’ll see if the plants can recover on their own with new growth. They’ll need drip irrigation.
