I know it’s summer when the fair brochure arrives in the mail. I go browsing through the home arts section to decide what to enter this year, and check on my tomatoes to see which ones will be the heirlooms to choose to enter.
I picked my first pickling cucumber this morning.
Not to brag or anything, but I put it up against the CSA pickles that came last Thursday. Mine is the big one on the left. 🙂
My husband wants me to make dill pickles like his mom made, and keep them in a crock. I hope my six plants give me enough to put up a crock of them. I also want to do bread and butter pickles for the fair.
In the past I entered tomatoes and herbs. This year I may branch out and do photography. I have lots of cool pics taken for the blog that would work in many categories, like historic Howard County, and animals, and still life (my flowers). Entering the fair is fun. Most of the time I get nothing but I have two ribbons, one for herbs and one for heirlooms.
Purple calabash, in 2010. This year I planted chocolate stripes, amana orange, legend, pink caspian, great white, pineapple and orange blossom. We will see what does best in my soil. I also planted lots of cherry and grape tomatoes. I never seem to do well in that area.
I did get a ribbon last year for my herbs. This year, the new herbs include tarragon and marjoram. I didn’t do stevia again. I did put in a number of lavender plants, and more varieties of basil. Can never have too much basil. Particularly when the tomatoes come in like this.
If you have never entered the fair, it is really easy to do. Herbs are the easiest. Flowers too. Growing enough veggies to meet the minimum in some categories is difficult but for grape or cherry tomatoes, it is easy to get 15 of them. It is not too late to plant a few tomato plants or an herb border in your yard, and you can put together the three herb arrangement you need to enter.
Try putting something out there this year. And, come to the fair in August. See if I got any ribbons!
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