What a beautiful garden!  Every time it rains, the garden shoots up like gangbusters.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t been doing that much, and watering has had to suffice.  I’m really enjoying my garden this year, and I’m already planning how to deal with the abundance that will be rolling in soon!  Let’s take a tour!

This is my zucchini patch.  All three plants are doing great.  One is a bush zucchini, one is a traditional green, and one should be a yellow.  We’ll see what actually shows up!

Next door to the zucchini we have the tomatillos.  This bush is massive and so pretty with all the blossoms.  I’m still waiting for some of them to take, and I’ve certainly seen bees and other bugs about to do their thing… I think the second bush just needs to do some catching up.

The hot peppers, and sweet peppers for that matter, are really loving the heat.  We have blossoms, peppers and some growth.  Surprisingly, the Ghost peppers I have in pots are neck and neck with the ones in the garden proper.  I find that very interesting.   I think the peppers above are Bulgarian Carrot- which we’ve decided I need to try pickling for Andy.

The beans and cucumbers are doing amazing.  Many of the bean plants have the beginnings of blossoms- I’m hoping they can hold off until after our camping week coming up to start fruiting.   I have beans planted all over the place.  After getting only a few handfuls last year, I decided I wanted tons this year.  My freezer is just dying for several quarts of frozen green beans!

We’ve been sneaking a few carrots here and there.  The kids just love them so much!  I’d love for them to continue growing and get bigger, but it’s hard to resist a carrot fresh from the soil.  I do have more planted- these are from my March planting- but the germination on the second round is not as great as the first round.

So how about some tomato talk?  My tomatoes… wow, are they blessed this year!  They’re so large and deep dark green, and the blossoms are rolling in.  Many are bearing fruit already!  I have the thickest stems I’ve ever seen- I’ve been doing the Florida Weave for support, but honestly, these plants are four feet tall and don’t need the support yet.  Absolutely amazing.

Here’s one of the beds above.  This bed has the dwarves planted in it- which has been my only problem so far.  They’re shorter than the other plants (duh) and they grow slower, so using the Florida Weave has been problematic.  If I continue to grow dwarves in the future, I’m going to have to take that into consideration and plant the dwarves in rows together.

My Southern Night is in the bed above, and these are the size of the leaves on that plant.  I’ve never had tomato leaves this large!  It’s a potato leaved plant, and is also supposed to be a determinate- we’ll see how it does!

Here is some fruit on my Raspberry Lyanna! This was one of those varieties that I had to have once I read the description.  I have another one somewhere in the garden.

Here’s the second tomato bed.  This is the home of most of my cherries and determinates.   This bed is doing great, of course.

Here are some Earlinorth- true to form!  An early determinate, I have four of these in the garden, and am so eager for a taste!

The Sungolds are the first cherry to bear fruit as well.  I really wasn’t going to plant any of these.  Now I’m glad I did, because these guys may give us an early taste!

Here is bed number three.  There are also eggplants in this bed- no blossoms on the eggplants yet, but the tomatoes are looking wonderful.  I need to go out later today and fertilize this bed- a few too many blossoms have not taken for my taste.  Part of that could be a lack of pollinators, but I definitely see the bees working it, and I do my daily inspection and shaking, so we’ll add some fertilizer as a back-up.

Here is my problem spot that is causing me all kinds of angst.  At the very far right of this picture is my hot pepper patch.  At the top you can see some broccoli plants and kale plants.  And tomatoes.  Lots of them.  Every single one is a volunteer- there are at least a dozen, though I haven’t counted.  At the bottom of this picture is the second planting of carrots.  I just don’t know what to do here!  In this bed last year I had Sweet 100’s, Purple Russians, Black Krim and Pineapple tomatoes planted.  The Pineapple never bore fruit, but the others did… and for absolute certain, there were Sweet 100’s that were dropped.  Zander loves Sweet 100’s, and I didn’t plant any this year.   I want to leave some, but I just can’t bear to pull any out!  We’ll see.  At this point I’m thinking I’ll pull the smallest ones, and there is one in the middle of my kale that needs to go.  Sigh.  As it happens, I also have a cucumber growing in one of my tomato beds that I did not plant.  I was going to pull it out, but it lives on for another day.

And finally, here’s a picture of the potato patch, which appears to be doing well.  Some of the plants are flowering, and we’ve added dirt quite a few times.  The dirt is now up to the top of the cinder blocks, and I’m unsure if I need to keep hilling up or if there is enough dirt to keep the potatoes safe.  I have no idea, but so far, this growing potatoes gig is really easy.  If it produces, I think they’ve just become a staple in the garden.