This has been another amazing week in the garden.  A total of two inches of rain fell on Friday and Saturday.  Then tonight we had another downpour.  I  haven’t checked the rain gauge yet, but it should be close to another inch.  I had trouble deciding what to put in your boxes, there’s so much ready to be picked! 

The tomatoes are beginning to pick up speed.  Everybody got either cherry tomatoes or small, slicing ones.  The heirlooms will take a bit longer to ripen, they should be ready in a few weeks. 

The green beans are loving all the rain. They should be in your shares for the next couple of weeks.  The next planting of beans has not done well, so there will probably be a gap in between. 

Everyone received a muskmelon in their share.  This one has orange flesh and has pretty good flavor.  Leave it on the counter for a day or two, and it will ripen further.  These are the best melons I have ever grown, as far as quantity and appearance.  The taste can vary so much between fruits, I hope yours tastes good.  If not, please let me know, so I can decide whether to grow this particular variety again.  They are a hybrid call Halona.  I grow all the melons on a 30’ x 150’ piece of landscape fabric.  The transplants are planted through holes in the fabric.  They are covered with row cover until they bloom, to exclude insects, such as the cucumber beetle and squash bug.  The row cover must be removed when they bloom so that bees can pollinate them.  Usually my melon plants succumb to disease before the fruits reach full maturity, but so far this year, they are loaded with fruit, and only now are showing signs of deteriorating.  Here’s hoping they will be able to hang in there so that the fruit can ripen.  I grew 8 varieties this year, along with 4 varieties of watermelon. 


Tomatoes  Everybody got either cherry tomatoes, or small slicing tomatoes.  I grow 4 kinds of cherries:  sun gold (orange), black cherry (dark purple),  sun cherry, and sweet Chelsea cherry (both red).  The slicing tomatoes are either Early Girl or Estiva, both hybrids, and very reliable.  

Green Beans   Provider is the variety I grow for the main crop of beans.
 
Beets  Red Ace is the variety I grow. See Recipes for Health at New York Times for more recipes.

Savoy Cabbage  This cabbage has finer texture than red or green cabbage, with crinkly leaves.  Use like regular cabbage in coleslaw or sauted, as in Hungarian Cabbage & Noodles.  See Week #3 for a recipe.  Or try this very simple coleslaw recipe: 
 
Cole Slaw
10 cup cabbage, sliced thin, tossed with salt
½ t. salt – let cabbage drain tossed with salt for a couple of hours
Dressing
1 cup cream
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup vinegar – white or apple cider
 
Lettuce   This week’s share includes either Slobolt (green, ruffly leaves)  or Antares (red, oak leaf).  Remember that summer lettuce can be a little bitter.  Shareholder Susan Connelly shared a tip from the Food Network:  Wash the lettuce very well, store in a plastic bag, with lots of air in it in the frig for a couple of days.  Supposedly, this removes the bitterness. 
 
Cucumbers  This summer I can’t seem to get enough of Cucumber Salad.  I have been making it weekly since I began picking cucumbers.  This will be the last of the cucumbers.  I pulled up the plants this past weekend; they were declining rapidly.  See Week #3 for a recipe for Cucumber Salad. 
 
Carrots  This variety is Napoli, the mainstay of carrots!