We have Produce...

My vegetable garden has done pretty well so far. The tomatoes are producing like crazy. Both the little pear tomatoes and my heirloom red ones. I harvested the two cabbage heads for halushki a few days ago. I'm patiently waiting for my peppers to start their second round of production. My golden beets are delectable. I'll have one more bunch of them. I have two pumpkins... one already turning orange. The butternut squash will be good in the fall. And i've got to make more pesto because i have so much basil.

My melons started out well but have stopped growing to maturity... :-( One has already rotted on the vine. Dad mentioned that they can be very temperamental to grow. And I really want to try beans again next year.

Veggies!

The vegetable garden is doing really well. The peppers have been giving me a steady crop... not too many to overwhelm me. I'm patiently waiting for my second tomato and i did notice that my pear tomatoes are starting to yellow-up. I'll be harvesting beets in a day or two... special golden ones. I have been thrilled with my columnar basil... it's more like a shrub and it's compact growth is a really nice feature. The cabbage are growing nicely and my Mom's comment about placing mint near them seems to have helped deter any pests... i had to thin out my pineapple mint, so i placed it to dry around the cabbage. I noticed one pumpkin so far, a bunch of butternut squash and a couple melon.

Picked my first tomato today...

it is going to be so good with fresh basil and mozzarella cheese... and a little red onion.

It's the 4th of July... must be time to prune...

Time to prune the wild asters. I have found that if i trim them to "half as high on the 4th of july"... they get full and bushy rather than tall and leggy. So most of the asters have been pruned. The one exception is the asters behind the weeping atlas cedar. I haven't been able to get back to it (need to dig out some of the violas that are taking over the paths).

Perfect weather day today... so I spent the day doing shrub cutting... managed to cut down to stump level, seven shrubs that were about 5 feet tall. Five of the shrubs were on the front of the house, one on the back in my main flower garden and one down near the garden room. They were getting totally out of hand. And there is so much lush foliage that you barely realize that i had cut out so much.

Now that they have been cut, i need to prune the remaining foliage on the other plants. It's a never-ending process. But i managed to prune the shrubs when they were in the shade. My folks stopped by and took a load of shrub remains and i'll take the rest out to them tomorrow... Dad has a pile that he is gathering for bonfire purposes and i'm happy to make contributions.

Top-down view- June 27, 201

Top-down view- June 27, 201
Originally uploaded by pjslomer

Here's a view of my main garden taken from the 2nd floor window.

Vegetable garden is growing...

Garden is growing
Originally uploaded by pjslomer

Here's my nicely caged vegetable garden with sunflowers. The tomatoes have really gone through a growth spurt. The extra fending is going to come in handy to hold them up. The pumpkin, squash and melon plants took a beating with the heavy rains but they seem to be rebounding well. The beets are coming up slowly and i planted more seeds to fill in some of the space. The peppers are holding their own. And out of all the bean seeds that i put in, i have one plant!... so i reseeded. I don't know if a mouse found the seeds or what is going on.

Veggie Garden Notes

The tomato, cabbage and pepper plants seem to be doing pretty well. They have survived their earlier trauma and are starting to grow nicely. I mulched the tomato patch with newspaper and grass clippings. The pumpkin, squash and melon plants are progressing nicely as are the sunflowers on the outside of the fence. The beets are coming along very slowly and i'm disappointed that only one bean plant came up!... Last night i planted more beans and i didn't notice any of the older seeds, so i'm thinking that something ate them.