In case you are not at all familiar with loofas, they look like tubes of shredded wheat and are often sold as bath sponges right next to the nylon poofy things.

Pretty much everyone we told this year that we were growing loofas, said, “Mmm…and I always thought they came from the sea.”  I guess people (including me) grouped them with those sea sponges you use to provide hydration to hermit crabs. 

But, in fact, loofas are in the squash family.  They grow on a vine like cucumbers and look like zuccini until they dry out to look like this.

You peel away the skin,

shake out the seeds,

and POOF…a LOOFA (or LUFFA or LOUFA)!

According to Luffa.info, there are almost endless uses for them. Only two of about a dozen of ours have dried but we’re super excited to “harvest” the rest and use them or gift them. Wouldn’t it be fun to be gifted a homegrown luffa?

Recipes for carrots welcome

Oh, and we also pulled the bushel gourds, a lost potato and some onions today.

Pretty pathetic when you considered we planted 20 spuds.

We started last weekend heading out to go camping. Our house was in the path of Irene but our camping plans were far enough west that we thought we’d be safe.

We spent time with Boo Boo,

raced pedal carts,

and worked on our mini-golf stroke.

Saturday afternoon the forecast changed so we decided to weather the storm at home and pack up our tent while it was still dry.

We were pretty unaffected by Irene minus the 16 hour power outage which was greatly minimized by the generator Mom was able to secure on Saturday morning. Otherwise our basement would have gone underwater.

Family just down the road were not as fortunate.

Fortunately, everyone is okay and repairs are in the works.

As if an earthquake and hurricane weren’t enough, this is also Race Week in Baltimore. We’re not braving the crowds this weekend but many attractions were free for the first three days of this week. So we did brave the road closures for those.

Monday, we hit up the newly rennovated B&O Railroad Museum.

Yesterday, it was the National Museum of Dentistry.

Today, we explored Port Discovery and I forgot the camera. Fail.

Anyway, it’s been a great week so round out the summer!

P.S. The carrots seem to be a success this year. Yay for raised beds!

While this salsa may look pretty “normal,” it has a yellow heirloom tomato and “fooled you” jalapenos (peppers that look and taste like jalapenos without the heat).

This year the other fun and different things we’re growing are loofa sponges, purple and chocolate colored peppers, purple green beans,* peanuts, and bushel gourds. We are also trying some root veggies because of the softer dirt in the raised beds: turnips, onions, leeks, beets, radish, and garlic.

*Did you know purple veggies that are normally green turn green when you cook them anyway? It’s great. They’re much easier to pick because you can seem them but then they look ‘normal’ on your table.

We got all excited when they flowered until we read that flowers were bad when growing onions.  Who knew.  Basically flowers mean you planted at the wrong time and the bulbs are finished growing whether you like it or not.

So we pulled them all and have been enjoying them as spring onions. They’re pretty tiny but really tasty! We planted another batch so we’ll let you know how that goes since we put them in during the early summer instead of the late summer this time.

Cherry trees, coffee, three-in-one citrus tree, and chives.

Grapes galore!

This year’s tomato “cages.”

Cucumbers.

Snow Peas. Lovin’ the nylon netting this year.

We had initially thought we would do towers but then decided a long, narrow wall would take less time to build while still accomplishing its our original purpose…more potatoes in less space.

We’re planting blue potatoes this year.

We started by burying 6 long branches into the ground (about 2 feet deep) to make a rectangle about 6 feet long and 18 inches wide. We are using chicken wire (leftover from another garden project) to keep the straw in place.

The bottom of our potato wall has about 2 inches of rich top soil and compost.

We placed the spuds on top of the soil and covered them with more soil.

Then the kids put an initial layer of straw over the soil.

Two weeks in, our potatoes are really taking off!

We go out about every other day to layer more straw in. The idea is to elongate the root system which will produce more potatoes. When we’re ready to harvest, we’ll cut open our wall and clean potatoes will come tumbling out! No digging required. At least that how it goes in our heads. We’ll keep you updated.