Seriously sometimes I feel like a cheerleader when it comes to my tomatoes. All my heirlooms are so heavy with fruit, especially my cherry romas, amish paste and stupice. And finally, it is happening, my first stupice is turning red. Of course with this wonderful development mother nature decided to test my tomato protectiveness and we had a random brief but violent hail storm yesterday. To paint you a picture, imagine my expanding 21 week pregnant body zooming out the patio door through the nickle sized pellets of pain to throw a sheet over my tomatoes. That’s insanity dedication for you. Everything is fine, the slant of the hail was mainly coming through our mystery tree (can you identify it?) so just our raspberries, on the other side of our yard, took the worst of the punishment.

(This is what this area looked like before anything was growing!)

Michael and I have begun planning the expansion and repositioning of our beds for next year. We will be repositioning the beds because I kind of forgot to take into account the amount of shade Mystery Tree creates. The two beds nearest the deck receive too much shade to produce well, I’ve pretty much given up on having cucumbers for the year because of it, their empty trellis is a little sad do you think?

The new beds will be positioned along the fence coming eight feet (maybe ten) into the yard. Two of them will be three feet wide and two will be four feet wide. I think I am going to build them out of 2×12 untreated pine. In the far right corner of the yard are several tree stumps that I really do not want to rip out so I will be planting all my herbs around them in an irregular shaped bed. I am considering building a 4×4′ potato bin in front of that bed too. As all those plans develop, I’ll share more though.

For now we are just starting to lay the groundwork. Michael spent a couple hours last weekending laying down black plastic over the area some of the beds will be (thank you sweetie!) We also have two 4×8′ patches in the front yard blocked out too. The plastic will smoother the grass and weeds which will be easier to rip up come cooler weather and theoretically we will be less weeds to worry about. We also have to wait for the beds to be completely harvested since they have to be removed before the new beds. This autumn I may only build one so that I can plant my garlic before winter sets in.

Does anyone grow any heirloom garlic that stores well? (I am not interested in hybrids.) I added a variety to my heirloom wishlist but am open to suggestion for what works well in this area. I have some seeds I can swap for cloves too.