I picked four small Early Girl Tomatoes today. That’s about 73 days to maturity instead of the promised 53 days. The cold weather in June probably didn’t help. The rest of the tomatoes are still green, so it will be another August harvest.

The hatch brought about by the flooding from several weeks ago has emerged, and it is impossible to walk into the garden even in bright sunlight. If I want to harvest greens, I put on a hooded sweatshirt and long pants and pull the strings tight around my face, and then pick very fast. This is with temperature in the mid 80’s. The only other option is to drench myself in DEET, but that seems hardly worth it for 5 minutes of harvesting.  Any work in the garden for the next week or so is out of the question.

The only bright spot is that the Kale, Collards and Swiss Chard are doing very well, so we are eating a lot of sauteed greens which we are both starting to love. The pepper plants seem puny, but the Jalapenos, and both hot and sweet banana peppers are bearing well. The Jalapenos are totally un-hot however, maybe due to all the rain.

I picked the last of the kohlrabi today and made a great salad for our Friday night group. The kohlrabi was just starting to get woody, so it appears that the harvest season will be short.

The broccoli failed, it was starting to bolt. Most of the heads were stunted and rotten as a large volume of flower remains from the Honey Locust fell on the heads and held water during the weeks of rain and damaged the heads. I got one good bunch which went into the salad.

We got over 5 inches of rain yesterday and spent the day mopping up the basement, but kept the water from  the finished side with only a little of the carpeting getting wet. Then, late afternoon today in a freak storm targeting only Barrington, we got another 2 inches and spent another three or four ours with the wet vacs mopping up again.

Sunny weather for the next few days but temps in the 60’s tomorrow and low 70’s for the next few days. This is not doing the tomatoes, peppers and zucchini much good.

Katy, her mom and sister and Kevin are coming in for a bridal shower on Sunday. The weather should be nice, but we’re two days behind on preparations because of the weather.

I picked the first couple of Kohlrabi from the garden today and sauteed them for dinner.

The Arugula is flowering and totally bolted, but amazingly the flavor is still good, maybe just a little sharper. I made a salad with it for Guy’s Night Out last week and another salad for FWG on Friday. So I pulled it out along with the Altor, to give the tomatoes some room.

The lettuce is still good , showing no signs of bolting and just slightly bitter, I am impressed and Lolla Rosa is definitely going to be a regular crop. I’ll leave it in for a while and see how long it lasts.

The second batch of corn salad finally came up sparsely. It might be a good crop if it came up faster. There are a couple of strawberry spinach plants that came up, but probably not worth the effort.

I went to Home Depot to get 7 more tomato cages for the rest of the Roma tomatoes, and finally found a Mr. Stripey plant which I bought and planted. It’s a bit late, but it’s a good sized plant.

Natalie was gone to St. Louis this weekend for Katy’s Bridal Shower, so it’s a working weekend. I dug out the drainage ditch on the south edge of the yard near the house and lined it with the cinder block from the old greenhouse that was stacked behind the compost pit, and topped it with the flagstone salvaged from the old pond.

I moved the stepping stones back to encompass the septic tank as grass wouldn’t grow there (I discovered that there was only about an inch of soil above the tank.) I also lined up the wood walk in the garden with the rest of the path, so that it’s straight now, and I gained a couple feet of width on the west end of the garden.

I graded and tilled the new herb garden and planted, basil plants, basil seeds, lovage seeds and summer savory seeds and 1 plant. I left room for more basil and moved a bunch of garlic chives that were growing on the side of the house into the new area. I cleaned up the flower part of the garden and discovered that most of the perennials I planted last summer had survived, despite my earlier worries.

I also planted a variegated sage plant in the herb garden, and three regular ones at the entrance to the garden by the Rhubarb plant.

FInally I planted a couple of rows of Baby Bok Choy next to the arugula and a row of leeks along the Collards and a row of Green beans next to that.

I planted cucumbers along the back fence and some pickling cucumbers behind the compost pile in the space formerly occupied buy cinder blocks.  The pickling cucumbers were bought by mistake, but I’ll make quick pickles out of them.

I also planted several hills of the lemon cucumbers along the fence behind the Kohlrabi, collards and broccoli. I planted a hill of Lebanese zucchini behind the barn.

I finished out the herb garden with marjoram and chocolate mint in the remaining pots.

I planted another 18″ wide row of Arugula where the first bunch was.