menu for July 26th, 2025

Sayuri’s note:

We went to Japan to see my family in June. We had a chance to enjoy my Mom and little sister’s garden – vegetables like cucumbers, eggplants, green beans, potatoes, onions, and tomatoes. They have a small garden, but it’s amazingly productive. They planted only 5 grafted cucumber and eggplant plants in their garden, but they harvest over 10 of each everyday! We enjoyed them with almost every meal. The cucumbers are very flavorful, with a subtle sweetness that makes me think, “I could eat this forever.” Gardens tend to be very small in Japan due to a lack of space, so there is much wider availability of grafted vegetable plants, like tomatoes, eggplants, and even cucumbers. Grafting flavorful plants to strong rootstock from other varieties can help prevent problems related to planting the same vegetables year after year, as well as be more resistant to disease, drought or heat stress. I’d like to learn how to graft vegetables someday!

Sarah kept up with the garden while we were in Japan, but the weeds are so vigorous in June that we've had to keep weeding since we got back. We dug up our potatoes, and we are harvesting tomatoes now. We also replanted some summer squash, green beans, corn, and cucumbers, so fingers crossed that we’ll get a late harvest. 

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