Since I last posted, I went back to the garden on Saturday and staked the other two tomato plants in that row. The back row of tomato plants are the tallest and the ones most in need of staking. That row is now all staked and I'll get to the others later.

I did bring home 5 yellow squash plants and 2 peppers yesterday. One of the peppers had a bad spot in it and I felt that it should come off the plant. The other pepper is quite small but solid red. The squash and zucchini plants are getting so large that they are blocking the light from the other plants. I thought about cutting them back but I didn't have anything with me to cut them. I discussed this with Mary when I got back home and she suggested that we cut them and I agreed.

Today, I wanted to cut my grass but it was too wet, so I went to the garden instead. I did cut back a lot of the large squash leaves. This allows the eggplants and the peppers to get more light. I laid the leaves in the pathways. I hope this will help keep the weeds down and possibly develop in something like a compost. At least it won't hurt anything.

We had a storm last night and it helped with the trimming back of the yellow squash by blowing over some of the leaves. It also bent one of the stalks of corn. I tied the corn back up straight. I don't know if it will make it or not.

Today, I also, tied up the one cucumber that was being overrun by the cantaloupe. I tried to put the cantaloupe back into the little fenced area that we have for them, but they keep coming through the netting.

I was talking to a couple today. This is their third year at Stansbury. They had some minor storm damage also. One of their tomato plants had blown over and something happened to one of their pepper plants. I saw that they had watermelon growing and the lady, Carol is her name, said that they planted them in the middle of the lot because the other plants would hide them and keep them from being stolen. Ours are right down at the end of the lot, so I guess we'll lose at least some of them.

I brought home 3 zucchinis and 6 yellow squash today. By necessity, I've been making some dishes using the squash. Last week, I made a stuffed zucchini with ground turkey and spaghetti sauce. It was really good. Today, I made a pie with cottage cheese, yellow squash, zucchini, and tomatoes. That was definitely better than I expected. Either tomorrow or Tuesday, I plan on making zucchini bread using a cake mix. I don't make anything that's difficult. I don't know what vitamins are in squash or tomatoes, but I do know I shouldn't be deficient in them.

In the next couple of days, I hope to get a couple of tomatoes from the garden. We've been getting two or three a week. There are plenty of tomatoes there. We just need them to ripen up and then I'll be in my glory.

BAAAAD News and Good News

I'll start with the bad news first. We had storms go through here last night. When I went to the garden today, I was extremely upset. The one tomato plant had blown over cage and all. One of the stems had a severe split. Others were split or bent. This was especially true of the Beefmaster tomatoes. The other tomatoes didn't sustain as much damage. The Beefmasters are tall and heavy plus the wind was enough to throw them around. I went to the hardware store and bought some tomato stakes, twine and an axe. Then I pounded the stakes into the ground and tied up the plants. I wasn't able to pound the stakes as deeply as I would have liked, but I figure I'll drive them deeper into the ground each time I water. I was only able to do this to about 4 of the plants. It was so hot and I had missed lunch by the time I was working on the fourth stake, I had lost all strenght and had to call it a day. I could barely lift the hatch to pound the stake. I'll take care of the other two plants in that row tomorrow when I go to the garden.

All the tomato plants are full of tomatoes and a lot of them are a pretty good size. This makes them heavy and the cages we had are really too short for them. I told Mary the other day that we needed to get them staked up. That's what percrastination get you.

Here's what the tomatoes looked like after I staked them. I've tied them up so much it looks like they were trying to escape. And I think they were. They had spread all over the place

The good news is we now have little eggplants. In fact, we have 3 baby eggplants. Below is one.

And Cantaloupes!!!

The leaves on the cantaloupe plants have grown so much since Tuesday, that I was having a hard time finding them. On Tueday, I counted 7. Today, I could only find 5. I don't think anything is eating them. I just think that I couldn't find them.

Every thing else looks just fine--none the worse for the storm damage. They are calling for scattered storms tonight again. Well, it's summer time. What can you expect? I hope the tomatoes survive.

Cantaloupes, Cantaloupes, Cantaloupes.

The garden continues to grow each day. Today, I got 6 more squash, a zucchini, a tomato and two very small peppers from the garden.


The squash and zucchini are still taking over the whole place, with the cantaloupe coming in a very close second. I was amazed today. I found a small cantaloupe about the size of a ping pong ball. Then as I looked closer, I found another. Then another, until I counted about 7 cantaloupes in various sizes. I don't know what we're going to do with so many cantaloupes. People are afraid when they see me coming now because they think I'm going to give them more squash. I think I might run out of friends before I run out of squash.

The watermelon plant is really spreading out and the corn is maturing. I hope we don't get the watermelon at the same time as we get the cantaloupe. Or as many watermelons. We'll be over our heads in melons. The cauliflower doesn't look so great, but perhaps that will come into it's own in the fall. Two of the three head lettuce plants look pretty good but the third one looks kind of poor. Lots of tomatoes on the vines, but they seem to ripening one at a time. Hopefully, more will ripen soon. Some of the green ones are getting fairly large. That's when they're the best---nice and big and red.

I still keep a close watch on the eggplants. I haven't seen any blossoms on the ground so perhaps the lime I put on them helped. Of course, our old friend, the Colorado Potato Beetle is still around. I took a jar of water and dish detergent down there today and knocked the two I saw into the jar. I know that's what the man next to us does and he had a chewed up plant but it had a large eggplant on it.

Mary had sent me an email telling me I probably wouldn't have much to harvest today. She was really surprised when I told her what I found there. There's a tomato that should be ripe either tomorrow or Thursday, so I told Mary to take it. I hope she does.

I don't go back until Saturday. I wonder what treasures I find then!!!!

Today's news

I find it hard to believe how much the garden has grown since the beginning of this month.

The zucchini and squash continue to be very prolific. I removed 4 large zucchini and 3 yellow squash today. There promises to be a lot more. I've given them to friends and neighbors. I plan on dropping some off at my cousin Lois's house tomorrow. I've saute the squash, used them in salads and broiled them. I am learning many new ways to cook zucchini. And I still have more. The cantaloupe and squash really know how to take over a garden.

I have to say that I'm disappointed in the peppers. They don't seem to be attaining much size. Mary told me to pick the one of the green ones because she didn't think it was going to get any bigger. I really didn't see any that I thought were ready to be picked regardless of the size.

I still hold hope for the eggplants. The plants certainly look healthy and they have plenty of blossoms, but so far none have developed into eggplants.

My tomato plant in the Topsy Turvy seems to be doing well. I have about 8 tomatoes on it of various sizes, but none large enough to start to ripen. There was a tomato in the garden that probably should be ripe enough to be pick tomorrow. I hope Mary picks it. We have lots of tomatoes on the plants but none of them are really large yet and they are still green. I keep looking for the day when we too many tomatoes for our needs. Don't know if that's ever going to happen.

The watermelon plant is really growing nicely and the green beans are getting bigger everyday. I don't know what I think of the Alabama method of planting the beans next to the corn. I expected the beans to wrap around the corn, but they don't seem to be doing that.

Till next time.

The Harvest is beginning

Above is today's harvest. I don't know if you'll be able to tell or not, but that is a 15 inch ruler that I put in with the vegetables to try to give a sense of the size of things.

This morning when I went to the garden to water and feed the plants. I discovered that the squash elves had decided to put some yellow squash and zucchini in the garden. They were all over the place and more are coming. So I harvested some of the bigger ones. When I got home, I called Mary and told her to be sure to pick some tomorrow when she waters. We are going to be having squash coming out our ears. Good thing Viola send me that zucchini cookbook!!!

You can see that I also harvested some tomatoes too. I don't think its been warm enough for the tomatoes to really take off. I hope that happens soon.

I jealous of the man that has the next lot. His eggplant plant is all chewed up by the infamous Colorado Potato Beetle and he has a fairly decent size eggplant on his. Our eggplant plants are growing nicely, but still no eggplants---just blossoms. The blossoms tend to fall off. I asked Mary to put some fencing around them in case we are knocking them off when we walk by or when we water. My only consolation is that my neighbor doesn't have any eggplants on her plant yet either. Maybe Mary and I still have a chance at getting some on our plants.

All in all the garden is doing well, other than the squash plants and the cantaloupe plants trying to take over the whole place. I was pleased at how well the first watermelon plant is doing---no blooms yet, but the plant is growing nicely. Even though the peppers are producing fruit they don't seem to be growing very tall. I guess it's time for more research on them.

Just an short update

Things are progressing along at the garden. Mary tells me that she harvested a green pepper today because it was starting to get some red streaks in it. I understand that there are a couple of red tomatoes waiting for me tomorrow. I can't wait until the tomatoes really start coming in. I'm getting tired of buying them.

I used the squash from the garden to make a wonderful mixed vegetable dish. I use onions, peppers, garlic, EVOO, yellow squash, eggplant, and tomatoes all saute together. It is wonderful.

I had the nicest surprise today. My friend, Viola, send me a package. I couldn't possibly image what she was sending, but I had a great laugh when I opened the package. It was a Zucchini Cookbook. At least, my friends have faith in me. It is a very thoughtful gift and one that I truly appreciate. Plus now I have some recipes for using the squash (squashes???) in a variety of ways.

Well, until the next harvest or disaster...........

The case of the falling corn

Yesterday morning I went to the garden to water and feed the plants. All the corn we had planted the previous day were lying on the ground, with the exception of one stalk. I staked all the stalks and we'll have to see what happens. I watered and did some weeding. Then I harvested a tomato and a yellow squash. The tomato tasted wonderful!!!!

I also created an inventory of the various plants we have. I want to keep a record of the yield we get so we'll have a better idea of what to plant next year. Since we visited Monticello on Sunday and learned of the meticulous record keeping that Thomas Jefferson did, Mary teased me that I was following in his footsteps. Mary doesn't realize that I am truly a bookkeeper at heart.

That's about all for now. We're just waiting for things to grow and ripen so we can harvest the "bounty" of our garden.

A Harvest!!!!

Mary is very happy that we finally were able to harvest some vegetables. Here you see her holding a tomato, a yellow squash, and a zucchini. To the right is me holding the same harvest and bag of Organic Miracle Gro. Notice the Doo Rag.

Above and to the right is what we expect to harvest tomorrow. The tomatoes are from our Goliath tomato plants. Our Better Boy tomatoes have tomatoes on them but they have not started to ripen.



This morning Mary and I started working at 7AM. We planted additional peppers, eggplants, including a couple of Japanese eggplants, a watermelon, several stalks of corn to replace the ones that didn't make it, a few additional green beans, a couple more tomatoes, and 3 heads of lettuce. I don't think I'm forgetting anything. Tomorrow I plan to take an inventory of what we've planted and hopefully, I'll be able to track our yields so we can do a better job of planning next year. We changed the lattice work that Mary had created for the cucumbers so they resemble cages. I think this is a better solution. We also created some fencing for the cantaloupes to keep the from spreading too far. By the time we had completed all this fencing and planting it was 11AM and the flies had decided that I was a tasty treat, (I hate flies!!!!) so we decided to call it a day. We did put more Sevin on the eggplants because we found another one of those Colorado Potato Beetles. Tomorrow when I water, I'm going to check everything really well and possible but Sevin on everything.

All in all, I think we had a good day. I made Mary promise not to buy any more plants. We'll see how that works out. She'll find a space somewhere to plant them I'm sure. The shower sure felt good when I got home!!!!