Today’s pick:

Our eggplants are loaded with beautiful white and purple fruits. The white eggplant is a variety from Monticello – apparently one that Jefferson grew, and has been passed down through the generations. They are good sized, long fruits – nearly 12″ long, and each plant has at least 8 fruits on it. What a great find!

Temperatures have been consistently reaching the 90s this month, with a few streaks in the 100s. Pair that with 2″+ of rain each week, and you have the perfect weather for eggplants and peppers.

For some reason, though, our tomatoes are not ripening. We’ve picked a few small cherry tomatoes, and today I picked a couple of nearly-ripe orange tomatoes (Amana Orange). They both have pretty big cracks in them though, and look like they could start to go bad soon. Torrential rain is not great for heirloom tomatoes; it causes them to grow too quickly, and then they crack and are prone to insects and rotting.

In other news, I picked a Hungarian Carrot Pepper and, not thinking, took a bite out of it. The description on the seed packet just said “Great for frying.” No mention of heat. FYI – hungarian carrot peppers are HOT. Right up there with cayenne peppers, but it’s a different kind of heat. I’m sure they are terrific for frying… and I’m curious to see if they are more tolerable when cooked!

We only have a few opening up right now, because we planted most of our sunflowers to bloom in September.

Sometimes I wish I lived in a warmer place, just so I could have these be in bloom all year long.

Our yard and garden (and the entire neighborhood!) is being taken over by crab grass this summer. The stuff is awful – it spreads through the roots, goes to seed quickly, and takes over everything.

Today I got sick of pulling it out of the rows in the garden, so I decided to smother it with black plastic instead. Take that, noxious weed!

I hope this works, and then I’ll plant clover in the paths. Or maybe I’ll just put down patio blocks and be done with weeding between the beds. (That’s a tempting thought!)

My favorite flower

We didn’t start planting sunflowers until mid-June, so the ones that are opening now are all volunteers. This looks like a Sunny Smile (F1) dwarf sunflower, about 3 feet tall. It’s a hybrid variety so I think it’s kind of neat that it’s producing a large head similar to the flowers last year. Perhaps I will save seeds from it and see what we get in 2012!

Last night, we had 70 mile per hour winds (according to some storm reports from our county), which delivered half of a tree onto a section of my sunflowers and zucchini.

The sunflowers, sadly, did not survive. Zucchini, on the other hand, is impossible to destroy. Puck managed to pick a bag full of it.

Of course, I didn’t take a picture of the mess in the garden before I started cleaning it up. Maybe I’ll get a shot of the branches piled up later.

Puck loves zucchini season, because we never get around to eating it all… and that means that he gets zucchini with his breakfast nearly every day!

I spend too much time every summer trying to get clear pictures of bumble bees. They love the onion flowers, so it’s a good way to attract them to the garden!

My niece and nephew spent the night at our house last Thursday, and while they were here, we watched the Disney/Pixar movie “Ratatouille.” There was a two-year-old and a three-year-old, and Puck and two cats… And so I missed about half of the movie, but the dish has been in my mind.

Coincidentally, I picked one ripe eggplant and a half dozen little courgettes from the garden the other day. Since it was fairly warm out, I didn’t want to start up the oven… So I decided to hang out on the deck and try making a “grilled rattatoulie.”

Step 1: cut and grill zucchini, eggplants, onions, and peppers.

Step 2: layer vegetables in a disposable pie tin. Add garlic, basil, and thyme; drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle salt and pepper, and top with about 1/2 jar of tomato sauce.

Step 3: Cover with tinfoil, and grill at medium-high heat for 20 minutes.

… Serve with other items that have been wrapped in tinfoil and grilled. For example, buttery garlic bread. It was really good!

We spent much of the day out in the sun, and went for a nice bike ride. Beautiful weather this weekend, and rain possible tonight. I always hope for rain over night.

The daisies are in full bloom! I also picked our first small zucchini, one eggplant and a pepper, a head of broccoli, a bunch of chard, rosemary, sage, thyme, and basil this afternoon. Tonight for dinner, I think we’re going to try making ratatouille in mini bread loaves… on the grill, with garlic bread. Curios to see how that works!

Kallie says, “Happy 4th of July!”

These pictures are from last week, but we still have a few heads out there that need to be picked today. I also planted romanesco italia broccoli, which is a neat looking variety – but so far no heads. AND no cauliflower yet – what’s up with that? Last year I think our cauliflower was ready before the broccoli.

I put in a few kohlrabi too; that’s one of the least exciting vegetables (Puck likes it though!), but I have a box of seeds from 2007 that need to be used up, and found these this spring so figured I’d give it a try.

Temperatures have been in the upper 90s the last three days, and we got 1/2 and inch of rain last night, so things should start to produce very quickly now. There is zucchini ready to be picked!

I picked up a package of white eggplant seeds at Monticello this winter, and I’m really excited about these! I wasn’t sure what shape to expect from the fruits, and I’m glad these are long and skinny.

I’ve never successfully saved eggplant seeds before, but this fruit came out early for the season, so I’m hoping it’s a good northern variety that we can keep growing. The rest of the eggplants are loaded with flowers. I put in standard black eggplant as well. Looking forward to seeing the garden explode after this heat wave!