Zucchini, anyone?

Tomatoes along the fencerow.

Our 3 zucchini plants are producing new fruits daily. It only takes a day or two for a zucchini to grow to gigantic proportions!

Lemon cucumber trellis.

Watermelon.

Pumpkin.

Green beans trellising themselves all over the place.

Eggplant.

Looks like a pepper, but it's a tomato!

More tomatoes are ripening every day.

Views of the Garden

The garden this morning.


This is the sight that prompted me to get the camera out. I love those baby scallop squashes behind the flowers.


An adventurous squash plant.


Squash forest.


Two of the 5 possible colors for rainbow chard.


Our first watermelon.


I think the fire bowl had better make a run for it.


The first eggplant.


Anaheim pepper.


The fencerow tomato plants...


...just hangin' out.

Taking Their Sweet Time

The tomatoes are finally starting to come in. I like to let the garden move at its own pace, but it's been hard to watch green tomatoes sit there, then sit there.... and sit there some more. I posed the question "Why are tomatoes so slow this year?" on my online organic gardening forum, and there's about 40 responses so far. Mostly from people saying "Me too! I thought it was just my garden!" No one is quite sure why --- a colder than average spring is generally blamed as the culprit. At any rate, part of the fun of growing food is how little control we have over it. Sometimes you just get what you get!


The Siberian tomatoes have been turning colors earlier than anything else.






The Sweet 100s are making a rainbow.


Fried green tomatoes, anyone?


Last year the Country Peach plants produced a serious quantity of tomatoes. This is a volunteer from last year, and the fruits are just starting to turn yellow. There's an almost-ripe Giant Valentine in the background.

More Trellissing

Unknown volunteer - probably a spaghetti squash. This plant had barely survived transplanting and was very sad looking for its first couple of weeks.


Lemon cucumber plant with many many flowers.


Another spaghetti squash plant.

Gigantic Corn

It seems that I turned my back for just a moment, and the corn grew up higher than the garage.









Beautiful purple tassels.

Gourmet Living

Salad of Siberian Heirloom Tomato, Homemade Mozzarella, and Basil Trio (Sweet Genovese, Dark Purple Opal, and Thai) plus olive oil and salt.

Movin' On Up!

Recent picture of the garden, with newly trellissed squash plants.

My hope is that this will prevent the plants from growing all over the patio (where they're likely to get trampled) and also make it easier to harvest hidden squash. They say you can trellis any plant with fruit smaller than a volleyball... we'll see!

A spaghetti squash plant.

This one was a volunteer and hasn't revealed itself yet --- we'll see what it turns out to be!

Beans win the award for super-duper self-trellissing. They easily climb up string, over tomato cages, etc.

And just some pretty cherry tomatoes. Don't they look beautiful all lined up in a neat row like that?

Next Year's Carrots

One of this year's carrots, growing between the potatoes and the arugula. During the last 2 years I've planted Kuroda Long carrots.


Carrots are a biennial plant (as I discovered this year). If you leave a carrot in the ground, in the second year it will feed on the orange root and use the energy to send up a big flower.


The flower produces seeds over the course of the summer. When the seeds are about ready, the flower gets dry and brown.




The start of seed harvesting.


All of these carrot seeds are from just one flower. I will plant some this year to try for some late fall carrots, but most of them will be saved for next year.

Delicious Homegrown Meal

Last week we had a delicious "breakfast salad" made with golden beets, sauteed beet greens, and green beans from the garden. The mozzarella was homemade, too --- thanks to a wonderful cheesemaking kit I got from my mom (http://www.cheesemaking.com/) that gives you the tools to make fresh mozzarella in 30 minutes!