In Minnesota, the tomatoes don’t really start to ripen until late July. This year, we had a lot of rain in July and I think that made the fruits take even longer to ripen. But once there are fresh tomatoes… nothing else in the world matters.

Our tomatoes are overrun with early tomato blight once again this year. It is at the point now where there are very few green leaves left on the vines; they are nearly all brown. Fortunately the fruit hasn’t been affected, but I’ve done as much as I can to try and manage it this year. I have some ideas for next summer – and I’m hoping to spend some time learning more about blight this winter.

That’s a giant bowl of assorted cherry tomatoes: Amish Mayberry, Prize of the Trials, and Yellow Pear. I’ve been working on our tomato varieties page, compiling a list of varieties we’ve grown over the years, seed sources, and a few notes. I’d like to put a bit more time into this, and also put together the Peppers section in a similar way. Maybe some day…

I added a tofu ricotta, cream sauce, and mushrooms. Topped with nutmeg and cinnamon. Chris wasn’t a huge fan, but I thought it was pretty good. Next time though… I think I’ll leave out the eggplant. Hah.

This fairly large sunflower (it was actually a triple-headed sunflower) came up as a volunteer in my herb bed. I thought it was going to be a dwarf sunflower at first; I would guess that it reached at least 9 feet tall. The birds have been snacking on the seeds, and I wanted to save a couple to see if they produce similar plants next summer. Niko decided to investigate it after I brought it in.

Our sunflowers all ended up blooming 30 days *ahead* of schedule this summer, most likely due to the incredible amount of rain we received in July, and also really hot temperatures in June and July. It looks like we’re going to have to buy some sunflowers for the wedding this September, but hopefully we’ll still have a few to use from our garden then.