Produce Abundica & Under attack!

The CSA farm box arrived today.

Another good one with cherries, plums, nectarines, mango,

apple, oranges, red currents, English peas, corn, chard, lettuce, carrots,

leeks, broccoli, green onions, cherry tomatoes, & Roma tomatoes.

Why keep getting the farm box during the summer

when we are growing so much in our garden?

Well, first to support our local organic farmers,and second,

to get all the wonderful things we don't have in our garden (yet).

Here's the daily harvest from our garden:

a big pile of red and white potatoes (from just 3 potato plants),

Russian kale, summer squash, zucchini, peas, beans, chives, cilantro,

strawberries, and blueberries.

So what did we do with all this great bounty?

First, we had to find a spot in the fridge.

Then, we shelled all the peas and froze some of the red currents.

Tonight's dinner was a salad with the huge lettuce that came in the box, along with cucumber (farmer's market) and cherry tomatoes (box), a big pot of crab chowder with onions, garlic, lots of potatoes (straight from the garden), corn (box), herbs (garden), a dish of leftover paella, bread (from our local bakery), and for dessert gooseberry fool (berries from the farmer's market).

Daily veggie count = 15, fruit count = 4

We had to battle a pest in the garden today!

While we all were jammin' yesterday,

black aphids attacked one of the zucchini plants and killed a nasturtium!

Nasturtium act as an aphid trap, but this one was overwhelmed.

A quick search for an organic remedy lead to lady bugs and an extract from chrysanthemums.

As a few ladybugs were happily munching, but vastly outnumbered,

we added the extract spray to help them out.

The nasturtium was a total loss (goodbye sweet blossoms),

but hopefully, we can save the zucchini as it's been a great producer this year.