July And August In Bulgaria - Very Hot And Usually No Rain

July and August here in Bulgaria are the dry months and apart from being unseasonably flooded out early this month we are back into the trend of no rain and sweltering temperatures. This Saturday it was 42+ C! No one was outside expect grazing animals during the day; it was just watering crops early in the morning and last thing at night.

There was no water again this weekend it would have been nice to have a shower after grafting in the fields, but we were lucky that we have the well water to rely on and a ice cold shower in the heat was to say the least certainly refreshing.

We have a problem again here with our grapes. The thieving starling wait until our backs are turned and swarms of them clamber around every bunch of ripening grapes where most of them fall to the ground. This happens every year and there is nothing we can do about it. We cannot be there all the time and it is so frustrating after al the time and effort we put into looking after the vines. It could well be that there will be no wine or rakia this season with the damage they have done. I have written about this before and the Bulgarian way of dealing with it is do nothing, just be there.

The potatoes have been invaded with thousands of little orange beetles, but that is not so much of a problem as the actual buried potatoes are now full to size and just waiting to be dug out. The foliage being eaten to smithereens now doesn’t matter so I let them get on with it, in fact their doing me a favour by devouring them, less for me to transport to the tip at the top of the hill.

Watermelons and honey melons are set and just need a little extra time to 'sweeten up'. This is the first time I have grown these and I am very excited at the prospect, although Galia is quite keen to try them, but she can’t see what the fuss it all about when she can buy one for a couple of leva that is just as good or better in the bazaar and not get her hands dirty!

We get strawberries every week now albeit smaller with only watering once a week, but they’re sweet enough. The pumpkins have taken off and their massive umbrella leave spread out and suppress weeds that now get no light. They are such a low maintenance crop to grow once the roots settle in. We have created a small reservoir by the base of the source root and fill it up before we go back to town it last five days quite well now.

The proudest crop this year in the Skalitsa village farm is the sweet corn. Again, before this year I had failure after failure, but I’ve got it right this year albeit on a much smaller scale. Next year I will more than double the crop. Once again the foliage once grown suppresses weeds and they look after themselves if doused with water once a week.

Galia isn’t with me this weekend and stayed in Yambol as she has gone down with the flu, she was much better by Sunday when I got back to Yambol. We wanted to go to the Black Sea this weekend for a little break, but the apartment we found that had a great offer on was fully booked, everything else was too expensive so w have to wait for another deal probably not until September now.

Home Grown Crops On The Dinner Table

The produce is rolling off the land now both in town and country. The food we eat at lunchtime and evenings nearly always has home grown produce in it. It is exciting have the end product on you plate and tasting as good as it does. There is something very special about doing something like this.

Let’s start and see what on the dinner table on a day-to-day basis right now. We have had a continuous supply of onions and garlic and these will last us right through the winter. The lettuce now has finished its season and the space that was left has been filled with more peppers. After May it becomes too hot for lettuce here and you can’t freeze or preserve it.

The strawberries were the next; we had two crops and are still in the middle of the second. Not enough o make jam with but this is the first year they have been laid down. Always enough for a family dessert at the weekend as they are grown in the village. I am not too sure whether I will keep these here next year. The reason is they need watering regularly for a good harvest and that isn’t happening, hence the relatively small fruits we are getting from them. Also, they need to be harvested every day and that isn’t happening either so a lot of waste form over-ripe fruit each weekend.

The beans I though was going to be a complete failure. I planted 12 rows of beans and only two survived. I didn’t know why. Locals tell me that the seeds were old, but I felt that the two rows that did survive would indicate another reason, perhaps over-watering. Anyway the crops that come from the ones that survived where great. We got at least 8 kg of superb white beans from just that little crop.

The potatoes looked fantastic with the foliage and flowering more pertaining to a flowerbed than a potato crop. All the Colorado beetle and other gorging vegetarian insects were contained with no damage throughout the crop. There was however a massive disappointment on pulling up the first crop. Only a couple of potatoes were found and they were the size of golf ball. It was later realised that this was the shallow end of the troughs made for the watering and apart from the first couple of plants that stood there the rest were a fine crop. It is such a joy to see some potatoes of different shapes rather than the uniformed specimens in imported potatoes in supermarkets.

The beans and potatoes made into a soup by Baba and we just couldn’t get enough of it eaten hot or cold or in a secret raid of the fridge between meals.

Other crops aren’t quite ready yet and we can’t wait. This will be the most successful season growing here because for the first time I have been listening and watching and copying the Bulgarians. Still never as good and it never will, they just seem to have the magic touch with growing here, but I will improve each time I’m sure.