Thursday, June 19, 2014

It's Officially Summer (Almost)

I love to use the summer solstice as an excuse to mark progress in the garden. This is a good garden year as the weather warmed up much earlier than normal. My bell peppers are extremely happy. In this mix are Ace and Lipstick, seeds left over from last year that still germinated just fine.



Looks like I'll be eating cucumbers in the next couple weeks.  I believe this variety is called Corinto.  Again, seeds from last year.  Gotta love the quality of  Johnny's Seeds!



The green beans are flowering.  These are Fortex, my favorite variety of pole bean.


The monstrosity of the garden, zucchini. 


I love the flowers they produce, such a beautiful yellow against those big green leaves.



Carrots are ready to start coming out, I just need to plan the right dinner for them.  I believe this variety is Nelson.  I grow both Nelson and Napoli and forget which ones I planted, but they are similar.  Both medium sized varieties so much more delicious than the carrots in the store!



Tomatoes are producing, but they're all still green.  I'm guessing I'm still probably a month out before I see any red ones.  This year, I'm growing Brandywine, Big Beef and Cherokee Purple from leftover seeds of past years.  New to the garden this year are Early Girl and Martha Washington.  Looking forward to those!


On the west end of the garden, my tomatoes are 3/4 of the way to the top of the trellis.  Here I've got the Big Beef and Brandywine.  The little one to the left is my Cherokee Purple, which is not happy this year.  It's got leaf curl and the blossoms are dropping.  Not knowing what the problem is, I've cut it back, only keeping a couple stalks that have tomatoes on them.  I'll monitor a bit but will most likely pull the plant if it doesn't improve at all.  My fear is it could have something that spreads to the other tomatoes, so it's not worth keeping.

Thus is the situation I have every year with tomatoes.  I always seem to lose one or two to something.  I never know which one or why.  I've grown Cherokee Purple two years before this and it's been one of my best producing varieties.  This year, it's tanked.  So who knows?


On the east end, I'm growing the New Girl and Martha Washington.  These aren't quite as tall as the ones on the west side, and I've been pruning them more so they aren't as full.  But both have tomatoes, so we'll see what we get.  They are my two new varieties this year, so that's something to look forward to!


And the nasturtiums are making their way onto the path.  They're the only flowers I grew this year among the vegetables.  Often I do marigolds, but they would have required more water, and with the drought, I decided I could do without.