Blueberries, Cucumbers, Eggplants, and Basil

I thought I'd try to use the blog to keep track of when our fruit and vegetables started to ripen. That way we will have a better idea of what we can expect next year, and we can also see how bed location affects production and growth rate. (We're both engineers, so there's no avoiding our nerdiness.)

Yesterday was the first day that I was able to pick enough blueberries for a decent picture. Most of these were from one of our five plants, and these were only about 1/4^th of the blueberries on that plant.  The other plants, which are different varieties, still have mostly green berries.  I would expect those to take at least a few more weeks before they start ripening.  I'll go over the varieties we have and how we planted them soon.

We planted three pickling cucumbers that Carrie got from the Apex farmer's market the first or second week of May (see I knew there was a reason to write this stuff down).  We put them in a raised bed with three eggplants and three tomatillos.  They started producing about the end of the first week in June and have been going non-stop ever since.  We were getting 4 to 5 cucumbers a day, though I picked 8 yesterday and 13 today.  In the last two weeks we've picked around 40 to 50.  The plants seem to be quite "happy" so far, which is understandable considering what they're growing in.  I now fear what the two squash plants are going to do as well as the other cucumbers in the back.

Carrie made 2 quarts of refrigerated sliced dill pickles the other day, so once we get a chance to try them I'll go over the recipe she used.  Hopefully they are edible because she's in the kitchen now making several more jars in an attempt to keep up with the plants' production.  I have a feeling we're going to need more jars...

In the same raised bed as the cucumbers, we planted three 3" seedling Ichiban eggplants in mid-May.  (The Ichiban variety are a bit more slender than the normal globe shaped kinds, though they taste the same.)  Earlier last week we harvested one 7-8" long eggplant from each plant.  Today there were three to four 2-3" eggplants on each plant with several flowers blooming, so it looks like we'll get quite a few this summer.

The bugs seem to love the foilage on these, and the Japanese Beetles do not want to leave them alone.  The plants seem to be plenty healthy, though if we had set these out much later, we would definitely have needed row covers.

Next year we might try some of the globe shaped kind since they are should have a better "meat" to seed ratio.

We needed to thin out some of our basil, so I'll include it since it tasted just fine in our pasta Friday night :).  Carrie direct seeded it in a 3' row in one of the raised beds in mid-May.  We've had a row-cover over it ever since, which is why I think it looks so good right now.  I think the plan is to start some more shortly to extend the growing season.