Even summer isn’t supposed to be this lazy. Each morning, I head into the garden, revved up to work. I deadhead a few calendulas and alyssum (usually with my fist, as I’ve forgotten my pruners as usual.) I snag a blade of crabgrass sneaking up through some lavender, and some more encroaching on the lettuce. I wonder again what to do with my lavender now that it’s past blooming – fire sticks? Can’t decide; do nothing – again. Well, maybe there’s something to harvest.
I scour the strawberry plants for some fruit to pick – nothing left there. Zucchini? Nope, still just flowers, and I probably don’t have the cooking skill or the persuasive powers to convince my kids to try fried squash blossoms stuffed with polenta and Parmesan. My total harvest count so far this season:
- Approximately 22 tiny strawberries
- 1 spiny cucumber* curved like an elf’s boot
- 3 green beans
- 1 salad bowl of mixed lettuces
- 98% more cilantro than I could ever use
* Called Suyo Long (although YuSo Long would also work).
Suyo Long cucumber. (I think it’s supposed to look this way.)
Green Beans
But the real kicker? Here we are, nearly September, and we have not a single tomato to harvest yet.
Finally this week, after three days where Green Lake achieved sufficient official sightings of the sun, a glimmer of hope – a flash of orange or two twinkling among the camo leaf colors of my sad tomatoes – yellow, mudflat brown, and a kind of green so neutral and devoid of life that it could be mistaken for plastic.
Velveeta: for tomatoes, the color of hope
At this writing Early Cascade is Most Likely to Manage to Ripen, with a close runner-up in a cherry tomato plant. We’ll never get that trophy engraved, though because it could be “Sugar Snack,” “Sweet 100″ or “Sun Sugar” – husband planted the bed and get this – didn’t draw a map (!!) Of course, even if the tomatoes color fully, it remains to be seen if any will be granted sun and time enough to produce any sugar, without which this season has been one loooong experiment in observing tomato growth in less than optimum weather conditions.
The veggie bed in Happier Times
Perhaps I was overly optimistic after last summer’s success, but I knew the risks going in. Of course knowing the risks and believing they will happen to you, as any skateboarder will tell you, are like, two separate galaxies, dude. Note to self: tomato plant purchases next year will be capped at three – okay, five. Just in case, I should probably plant them in containers to avoid any soil-borne ickiness that may be partially to blame for this year’s sorrow.
So, I plod along with the nervous inertia of an Emperor Penguin, who knows that conditions are so perilous and time so short that only a few tomatoes may hatch and survive. Tomatoes don’t hatch but you know what I mean – after grabbing a sweater, there’s nothing to do in the garden but wait, watch and wonder. Sigh. Oooh! Another piece of crabgrass to pull. Small steps which reap massive, exponentially disproportionate satisfaction.
(By the way, don’t give up watering just because the sun is back in hiding now. It’s best to water deeply less often than shallowly every day or two. )
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Read more My Green Lake articles written by Erica Browne Grivas, freelance journalist for hire.
Check out Erica’s blog In the Details for more garden adventures.
