Are we tired of rain yet? I’ll be honest that I’ve rather lost track of our rainfall totals…they just keep adding up. It just adds up to “wet” and “very wet.”

I think the garden is starting to look a little bit lush and rainforest-y, don’t you? The sweet potatoes are growing so fast.

I’m afraid this is a portent of things to come with our fall brassicas planting… We have cabbageworms on the plants while they are still seedlings in my office! (We had them outside for ONE day a week ago and managed to get eggs laid and hatched out. Yikes.

We harvested the first of the Yellow Stuffer tomatoes this week and cut it open for a look and tasting during our work time on Tuesday. The cavity isn’t as big as most large bell peppers, but it has a very different interior look than most tomatoes. It wouldn’t be hard to get the seeds out, or just add more stuffing around them.

Denise came and got a huge bowl of eggplant from me on Monday and then tried several recipes in preparation for our next Saturday Sampler on the 17th. I sampled the dishes for lunch on Tuesday. Two of the recipes were okay, but not my favorite and the other three were very yummy. They were almost good enough that I didn’t know I was eating eggplant! You’ll have to stay tuned for some of those recipes.

The ‘Snow Leopard’ Honeydew Melon are appearing quite productive, although we haven’t picked one yet. It is a little bit challenging to tell for sure when they are ripe, and we picked a couple honeydews last year that weren’t quite ripe. This one looks like it is getting close, but I don’t want to pick it too soon. The keys with honeydew is that the rind should be creamy colored instead of greenish, and it should feel waxy to the touch rather than hairy. We may have to try picking this one next week and giving it a try.

You know you’ve had a lot of rain when even the grape tomatoes are cracking this badly!

You also know that it’s been raining a lot when the melons are cracking! Granted, this is an Asian melon that has a thinner rind/skin. It has cracked pretty badly. We had several of these melons ripe this week, including one that was completely eaten hollow by the sowbugs taking advantage of the cracks. We tried this one. It was nice and crunchy and sweet. We decided that if you tell everyone it is a sweet cucumber, it gets better reviews than if you bill it as a melon, because it isn’t as sweet as most of the melons we are used to. It does have a very floral taste as well.

The ‘Super Sweet 100s’ cherry tomato that is on the trellis/arbor is going crazy! It is very much living up to its name. The tomatoes also are getting smaller and smaller as the numbers increase. We discussed this week that this is a good example of why more pruning may have been beneficial on this plant in particular. Fewer, but larger fruit!

Have a great weekend! Stay dry!