Yesterday I spent the day in the garden.  I couldn’t have asked for a better day, as it was hot and sticky and because of that, it was quiet.  No one was out doing yard work, and even all the kids were inside in the cooler air conditioned homes.   So I spent the day plucking weeds and giving every single plant some attention.  The first real bit of attention went to my pea plants.  The shelling peas were ready to be picked, and it’s amazing to me that in just a few days the plants themselves went from vibrant and healthy to “oh my gosh, it’s getting hot- time to shut down”.  Really, just like that, the plants were dying off from the bottom up.  So I picked all of the shelling peas and then pulled the plants out.  Well, I didn’t pull them out actually, I snapped them off at the ground.  Pea roots leave beneficial nitrogen in the soil, so I wanted to be sure I left the roots in the dirt. The snow peas will be coming out in the next few days as well, I think.

With the shelling peas out, I took a long look at my kale plants.  Seriously, they were turning into monster plants, and I’d planted four per square foot.  It didn’t take a genius to see that I’d over-planted a bit.  So I took three of those kale plants and transplanted them to where the pea patch was.  They really didn’t like being moved.  Yesterday they wasted no time in wilting, so we’ll see… I may have killed off some of the kale.  Hopefully they’re just mad at me and will spring back after last night’s rain, and today’s cooler temperatures.

I also found okra flowers yesterday! Okra is one of those things that I really don’t know if they’ll grow well here. I’ve been keeping an eye on them, and for the last week or so they all had these pointy things on them, which I wondered about.  Could they beginning to fruit? That didn’t seem right to me, as I’ve heard the plants can get pretty tall.  Turns out, they’re blossoms! And pretty ones at that.

Then there’s my lovely tomatoes.  They’re still doing incredibly well, and most of the plants are bearing beautiful green fruit for me.  I had to add some bamboo poles to a few for added support, and this weekend Andy and I will have to come up with a means to extend the tomato trellis- because they’ve reached the top!   I hope they take they’re time ripening, as we have a week away at the end of July, and I just have a sneaking suspicion that my tomatoes are going to ripen just in time for me to be gone for a week.   It’s also very interesting to see the difference between the heirloom tomatoes that I’ve started from seed, and the few store bought plants I bought because they were there.  The store bought ones are barely growing, and just don’t look anywhere near as beautiful as the heirlooms.  Where the heirlooms are going on 5 feet tall, the store bought ones are hovering around 18 inches or so- just tiny and not doing much.   Here are all my tomato pictures:

Green Zebra:

German Red Strawberry:

Siletz, you can see the biggest tomato starting to get a slight yellow haze to it.  These are the early tomatoes, so they could be thinking about turning red I suppose.

Here’s some of my plants, large, tall, and sprawling:

And then here’s the store-bought ones:

And finally, while not a tomato, here is a picture of my radicchio. They seem to be growing a lot like cabbage- the leaves are forming and then curling onto itself. They have a slight purple hue to them, which is only going to intensify as they continue to grow.

Which brings me back to the peas.  Last year I didn’t grow any peas, and we missed them.  While we never did anything with them, the snow peas were fun to just pick and eat.  The kids loved to do that- they’d walk out to the patch and just sit there and have a snack.  So this year, I determined I was going to plant them again.  Only because I had extra space, I decided to try some shelling peas as well.  The thing about the shelling peas though is that it takes a lot to get some peas.  Yesterday’s picking yielded about 2 1/2 cups of shelled peas.  The previous days picking was about a cup, and before that we would just pick a handful here and there.  The point being that it takes a lot of pea plants to make a substantial amount of peas.  Yet we enjoyed them.  Even I liked them- and I’m not fond of peas at all.  The peas themselves were twice the size of a store bought pea, and they weren’t mushy in the least when I’d cooked them.  So I’m unsure if I’ll be planting them again.  At least where we are now.  I could see at some point, if we had some acreage and a large space for gardening, devoting a bit of space to peas, because they were delicious.

Later this week I’ll give a tomatillo update.  They’re…well, they’re getting massive.  Andy keeps calling them my beanstalks, because they look like they could just grow forever.  The amount of blossoms and tiny little lanterns forming is encouraging.  I can practically taste that green salsa already!