555Harvest Time

As it turns out, there is such a thing as too many beans after all. We intended a staggered planting, but crossed up the seed packets: if you plant your 60-day beans first, and the 40-day beans 3 weeks later (d'oh!), you get a green bean tsunami in 9 weeks. We've frozen them, given them to our neighbors, fed all my wife's grad students. With almost no freezer space left we have resorted to pickling them.

Homegrown beans, homegrown garlic, homegrown dill, homegrown cayenne pepper. Kosher salt and organic distilled vinegar are the only ingredients that didn't come out of our soil or faucet. Unlike last year's refrigerated cucumber dill pickles, these are hot-packed, and headed for the basement. I expect that we'll be canning 4 or 5 quarts of tomatoes each weekend through the end of September. This photo is for Paul Ramsey:

My potato experiment seems to be a success. I dug once under the sprawling canopy, and was pleasantly surprised to find this (50% larger in the photo than in life):

All our other fruit and vegetable needs (peaches, pears, melons, onions, and shallots) are met by the vendors at the downtown Farmer's Market, which is jamming this year like I've never seen before.