20210813

Harvest

 

cherry tomatoes by Yukié Matsushita

"Every tree, every growing thing as it grows, says THIS truth,
you harvest what you sow."
— Rumi


Ça y est !

I picked some of my orange and green cherry tomatoes. 
They are riping in a basket slowly and surely. 
In Loches, France, it's been exceptionally cool and rainy summer. 
Tomatoes, fruit trees, and other plants suffered. 
Most of my tomatoes are still green now.  
I heard that before a tomato rots, you could pick green tomatoes and let them ripe in a basket. 
So, that's what I will do. 
For me, from seed to riped tomato, it took four months and a half to grow. 
In warmer climates, it will take only two to three months. 

What grew well in excessive rain were zucchinis, mushrooms, and Marigold flowers. 
We planted two zucchini plants last year, and they grew well. This year, zucchini plants grew surprisingly bigger than last year. The garden bed which we made for zucchinis was not big enough. Zucchini plants went way over an edge of it. Since I did not expect the zucchini plant to grow so big, I planted some green beans next to them. I was afraid that green beans would be overshadowed and would not grow. However, they found their ways to grow and still gave us some green beans.  

We planted three cucumber plants, they grew fine, but one eggplant plant died because it got sick. 

I failed to master the use of mulch, so the weed took over the garden. 
Since it rained so much, so I did not tend our garden for days. And that was a big mistake. One time, the weed grew as big as the plants, which was quite overwhelming and discouraging. 
My friend Julie encouraged me to work on the garden for 30 - 60 minutes EVERY DAY, and her advice helped me. We must tend our garden a little bit every single day; otherwise, the weeds start to grow. 
I avoided working on the garden when it was wet, but actually, it was the best time to pull out weeds. 

Well, for someone who did not know much about gardening, the plants grew somehow.  
I am constantly fighting to get rid of weeds. Our garden reflects my garden skills — not very experienced.