Pickles Etc.

It didn't take long for Kathy to turn cucumbers into dill pickles.

I spent the morning planting seeds for salad cucumber, cilantro (saved from last year's harvest, so we'll see how they do), zucchini, and yellow squash. I added two carloads (about an eighth of a yard) of composted manure to the bed. This is the bed from which the Russets were harvested. It needed a bit of compost, probably more than I gave it.

I also planted Basil with the new bed of tomatoes. I bought some tomato cages so that now all of the new tomatoes has a cage. They were $4 each and it reminded me that growing our own is not necessarily the least expensive. My older friends who are much better at this than I am use wooden stakes. I don't know if they use new stakes every year or how much time they spend tying the stalks up. I've just opted for the wire cages. And I reminded my self that the purpose of this gardening venture does have benefits, just not economic ones. We get fresh food. We are better prepared for hard times should they come to our family. We are learning skills that, being the product of an urban youth, we weren't blessed with naturally. And, the last thing of note is that the other things we spend our money on are more expensive and less sufficing.