The world's most amazing squash squashed!

Fall's getting close and the garden's finally starting to pay off. I'm still eating grapes and expect there to be more varieties ripening over the next few weeks. The first round of peaches are gone and I got to eat a few.

Now the sweet corn is ready. I think we'll pick most of it this weekend and freeze what we don't use right away. Some of the ears have minor damage near the end from beetles but nothing that can't be trimmed off.



Still, I'm convinced gardening isn't worth it. I could have bought half a dozen peaches, a bunch of grapes, and a bushel of corn and been ahead.

The mystery vine growing along the house will probably remain a mystery. The only fruit growing on the vine was torn off of the vine yesterday. The details are sketchy but I know it involved an unsupervised toddler who, I was told, meant no harm.



It might have just been a boring old pumpkin. On the other hand, it might have been a new, undiscovered variety of cancer curing, anti-aging, unlimited fuel supply, high temperature superconductor squash. Now we'll never know.

More good than bad.

Today the carrots are almost carrot sized.




I first noticed watermellons on the vines about a week ago. Now they're probably 6" across.





The tiny, sickly little pepper plants have more pepper than plant.





The celery looks just like the stuff in the store. I even used some in a pasta salad the other day. I plan to wrap them in paper soon for a couple of weeks to lighten the stalks and remove some of the bitter flavor.





The corn is as high as an elephant's eye today.





The cucumbers have cucumbers





The replacement tomatoes in the garden have a few tomatoes and even my hanging tomato has tomatoes.





And best of all, the Japanese Beetles keep dying.

So far so good

It's summer, it's hot, and a lot has happened since my last post on the 8th. Two weeks ago I was loosing peaches and my pears had what looked like fire blight.

The permanent plantings

So far, so good. The peaches stopped dropping and I've still got a lot left on the tree. I'm assuming there was just too much fruit ont he tree and it was natural thinning.

Peaches, almost full size

I've had to cut out a couple of more branch tips on my pears as they curl and turn black to keep the fire blight from getting a real foot hold but there hasn't been any new damage in a week so I'm hoping I'm out of the woods. The few pears that were on my two small trees are still there and starting to look like pears.

pears looking like pears

The apples have been doing well. They've got some brown spots but nothing that's really going to hurt them. They're not pretty enough for the supermarket but I'll eat them.

apples

The only other permanent planting that's doing anything interesting is my grapes. I've got grapes, lots of them. Most are hidden under the leaves but you can see a couple of bunches on the left side of this picture.

grapes

Now onto the garden.

You might remember that I'm trying some giant walking stick cabbage this year. I think they're doing well. I have no idea what they're supposed to be doing but they're not dead. This is one of this year's odd ball plants I'm trying. I should have walking sticks in no time.


The corn and sugar sorghum is looking good. Actually, only about half the sorghum came up but that half is looking healthy. Corn always does well until just before it's ready to be picked. Then beetles eat the silk, worms move into the husk, or earwigs take over.

The broccoli came on unusually early this year. I cut the first heads a couple of weeks ago and it was already full of worms. I'm going to let the rest go to seed without cutting any more. I just want to see how that happens and I can buy broccoli at the supermarket without worms. If I was starving, I could eat the broccoli. Thankfully I'm not.

The onions are looking great. I don't have much luck with onions so I don't know what's different this year. Usually, they get rotten right at the ground line in the early spring.

corn and a sparse row of sorghum

Celery is starting to look like celery, The lettuce and other greens are past their peak and should be sending up flowering stalks to make seeds soon. I've never tried planting lettuce from my own seeds but I have had them go to seed and ended up with a yard full of lettuce in the fall. There are hundreds of little 1/4" diameter carrots.

everything else (almost)

I planted 5 tomatoes. Three regular full size tomato plants and two grape tomatoes. They're not doing well. I don't know what's wrong. They haven't grown much, they look a little wilty and the color isn't really as green as they should be. There are a couple of diseases that can do this but they've been like this for three weeks and if it was a disease, they'd be dead.

I've still got some room left so I think I'll try some new tomato plants on the other side this weekend.

underachiever

I had planted 8 cucumbers. only two have survived. The two look good but I'm also growing dill and was hoping to can some dill pickles. I went looking for cucumber plants last weekend to replace the dead ones but no body had any left. It looks like I need to finish stringing the trellis for the cucumbers this weekend. I am going to try growing them up on a trellis to keep the cucumbers off the ground.

lonely cucumber

Finally past the frost free date

Saturday was busy but Sunday was planting day. I've been waiting for May 15th for a long time. May 15th is our "Frost Free" date, supposedly the last day frost can happen. We actually haven't had a frost for a month or so.

I picked up a flat of plants. Two six-packs of green bell pepper plants, two six-packs of yellow bell pepper plants, two varieties of cucumbers for canning pickles, half a dozen regular tomatoes and half a dozen grape tomatoes, and 4 watermelon plants.




I've never seen chocolate peppers before and I like trying odd-ball stuff so I had to get them. Last year I had 4 tomato plants and we had 30X more tomatoes than we could use or give away. I only really want two plants this year but they come in packs of 4 or 6. To get two different varieties, I ended up with more than I can use.

It's looking like I'm going to run out of room in my garden. I've only planted just under half the space so far but I've got big plans, so I need to save space. I planted the peppers and tomatoes between the rows of lettuce, spinach, peas, and other greens. Since the leafy vegetables and peas will be done before the weather gets really warm, and tomatoes and peppers are subtropical plants that really take off in the heat of summer, I'm hoping the leafy stuff will be gone just as the tomatoes and peppers start to take over the space. Another garden experiment.




After planting a row of a dozen peppers and 5 tomatoes, my 8 year old daughter and I marked out, raked smooth, trenched, planted, and covered a row of silver queen sweet corn. I plan on doing 4 rows of corn. We were starting to mark out the second row when a storm blew up. We grabbed everything and ran for the shop. So now I've got a flat of cucumbers, watermelon, and the extra peppers and tomatoes sitting in the shop waiting to be planted.