How does your veggie garden grow (v.2011)?

So, how goes the garden?

Dug about 1/2 our garlic yesterday and the garage smells wonderful.

First zucchini harvested yesterday.

Maters are small and green, so I estimate a couple of weeks yet on them and the peppers. The plants all look healthy so I expect a good season despite the slow start due to the wet Spring.

Spinach and lettuce have been plentiful with multiple plantings.

No signs of the groundhogs since I poured gasoline down their burrow and set off Mt. Aetna .

Things we planted from plants are looking good except for one squash. Tomatoes has some blossoms. Things from seed coming up gradually. Beans look best. Stay tuned.

All my herbs are doing great, as always. For the third year in a row, my tomato plants are doing poorly. They are tall, have tomatoes, but the foliage is sparse. I am going to go back to organic chicken manure and forget about all the fancy bags of mixed bat guano, mushroom compost, manure, etc. My pepper plants have taken off and I have a lot of good size peppers, which I am waiting for the color to change. All are sweet and turn either red, orange or yellow. I planted one jalapeño and it has two peppers, so far. My one cucumber has three baby cucumbers on it.

Back to the tomatoes. Every class I have taken on growing tomatoes, we are told to water once a week, even in Redding. I've grown tomatoes for 37 years and have had fabulous crops each year until the past three, when we switched to all the products the tomato gurus suggested and started holding back on water. How often do you water? Our temps in the summer have been ranging from high 80's to 107 so far. Another thing, we used to drip irrigate and now Gene has the drip set up to run streams of water. I grow in raised beds, so I know the drainage is good....but I think the drip system worked better.
Oh, my two large pots of Chinese Long Beans are as tall as the tomato cages I have in the pots. We have added twine for them to crawl over to the PVC pipe above the tomatoes, where we usually hang shade cloth. If the beans grow fast enough, I may not need shade cloth on that one raised bed this year.

[Robin Garr]

We're getting roma beans and okra reliably enough to use in meals now, but I'm getting tired of waiting for the tomatoes to come. Grateful to the farmers' markets, which have been bringing them in since just after mid-June, but we've got a ton of heirloom beefsteaks and plums out there that I'm watching and wishing for.

How often do you water? Our temps in the summer have been ranging from high 80's to 107 so far. Another thing, we used to drip irrigate and now Gene has the drip set up to run streams of water. I grow in raised beds, so I know the drainage is good....but I think the drip system worked better.

Karen,
I'm still acclimating to gardening here in Southern Indiana not far from Louisville and Robin.
Our temps have routinely been mid to upper 80s with just one day above 90. Last year we had drought conditions and I couldn't water enough. This year I added straw mulch to a depth of maybe 10 inches and the tomatoes seem much happier. The mulch obviously conserves the water and keeps the soil at a more consistent temperature.

Coming to the end of snap peas. Escarole is all. Small lettuces are heading. Pink currants are spectacular. Black currants about ready. No beans, tomatoes or zucchini flowers yet. Red raspberries next week

All cleared and resting over the winter.

My first tomatoes are just starting to come in. This year again I planted them all in large pots to avoid the blind Chesapeake from playing "Gorilla in the Mist" hunting for ripe tomatoes. A couple of years ago I had a beautiful heirloom patch of tomatoes. The plants were huge, and the tomatoes plentiful and large. When the first ones started to ripen the patch was attacked. It look like a gorilla had thrown a temper tantrum. The vines were thrown in all directions and the tomatoes had been pillaged.

The first tomato this year is of course, the heirloom grape tomatoes. I only grow the heirlooms at home and purchase the others at the farmers markets. I ate the first grape tomato a week ago. I have the pot hidden in the corner of the deck surrounded by tall railing and a tall bench. Two more tomatoes were beginning to show color. Yesterday in the late afternoon I looked outside. The blind tomato thief had crawled and squeezed under the bench to reach the tomato plant. A number of the stem branches were broken off. The two ripe tomatoes were gone! Outfoxed again by a blind old dog!

I have French tarragon along the south side of my garage. I had sage there also. Both returned each spring, except this spring the sage died out. Luckily I transplanted some sage last summer on the top edge of one of the rain gardens. It loved it and came back strong.

Now my French tarragon is getting old and unruly. I put a new little one in next to the transplanted sage but it is just not growing. The rain garden is exposed to the north and west. Most of our weather especially in the winter comes from that direction. If sage made it through a MN winter with a north west exposure it has proved it's hardy.

[Jenise]

My tomatoes are doing well; one's ripening already. A few blueberries suddenly turned color. Thing is we've had temps in the 70's for a week now and everything's suddenly jumping out. I'm putting in squash today.

Jenise, our low temps have been in the high 70's for what seems like weeks now (with highs at 100 or so), and more of the same is in the 10- day forecast. Gardens everywhere around here are suffering.

[Jenise]

Jenise, our low temps have been in the high 70's for what seems like weeks now (with highs at 100 or so), and more of the same is in the 10- day forecast. Gardens everywhere around here are suffering.

Boy, it's all relative, isn't it? I had dinner guests last weekend in from Hong Kong. While we luxuriated in the warmth, they froze.

The Cubanelle peppers are really producing as are my sweet banana. The gold bell peppers are starting to turn color. The small red in the picture are Jalepeno....stunted for some reason. We get a few tomatoes everyday...but this year the peppers are the stars. I have long red ones called Carmen, also a sweet pepper. They are still green, however.

Everything is 3-4 weeks late this year. The spring weather was much colder and wetter than usual; stuff we planted after the last frost barely grew for several weeks. We would normally be having our first BLT about now.

Our only harvest so far is two gypsy peppers and one cuke.

[Robin Garr]

Like Jim and many others, we're late on tomatoes this year, and suspect it's due to a weird combination of a cool, rainy spring and a very hot summer punctuated by Noah-style rains. However, that combination has been great for most other plants, and we're already being inundated with more green beans, eggplant, okra and cucumbers than we can reasonably eat. We're sure trying, though!

Still no tomatoes ripe here. Have been getting plenty of herbs, lettuce, spinach, parsley, zucchini, sweet peppers and garlic. Heck, yesterday we harvesyed a couple pounds of volunteer potatoes from the compost pile.

[Jenise]

Very cool summer this year too, but I did pick my first tomato last Saturday and a second one from the same bush yesterday. Neither made it into the house. Feels good compared to last year when I picked my first tomato on September 11th, even though at this point there isn't another even close to turning color. This bush is one of the shortest ripening I've ever seen, the tag got lost but its name is something like Stupak and it's a 50-something day tomato. If only they tasted better!

Picked our first tomato monday. We grow six or seven (I forget) types of peppers and have been using some of the earlier varieties sparingly so far. Herbs are doing well- especially the basil and rosemary. Many basil pizzas in the last month or so.

Garlic probably needs another week or so before I dig it up.

Just to be certain I get a few more, I planted 6 tomato plants this year (to my usual 4). Looks like I will pick my first batch next week. The herbs are doing great (except the basil for some reason). And the bay leaft tree has rebounded with extreme vigor and huge leaves (not a sign of white fly -- so far). Green beans are just around the corner, and this year I'm trying my hand at butternut squash -- plants are coming along nicely.

Been thinning some things our, and we've injoyed them in our salads. Other than that we still only have some blossoms here and there.

The deer and racoons have decimated all of our tomato plants....I think I'm going to turn my attention to harvesting venison now.

Drew

We should be able to harvest one each green and yellow zucchini in the coming week.

Well, it ain't exactly a veggie, but the Gravenstein apple tree that I planted bare-root actually set an apple, and it'll be ripe whenever I pick it. It got color a couple of weeks ago in the 4th of July heat, and since then it's been getting fatter and fatter. Maybe I'll post a picture of the well-gnawed core.

John

[Jenise]

John, that's cool: always feel like such a proud parent when we get a first harvest!

I had a disturbing development in my garden yesterday. Was watering on the beach side of the house where I added two artichoke plants to an empty space in my otherwise ornamental beds, and realized upon closer inspection that what looked like black dirt all over the core and new growth of one of the two was in fact a swarm of carpenter ants. Not both, just the one, but that same bed holds my pride and joy, a rare Spanish fir of a type grown in the Algarve region where only 96 of these trees are left in the wild, so suffice to say that both plants are now gone. Anything, ANYTHING, that draws those pests close to the house get ripped--and the only other thing that ever did was a beautiful old rose, probably original to this house. And that I kind of understand, it was geriatric and there was a lot of wood there to munch. But a robust young artichoke? Why that, and why one and not the other 18 inches away? I don't get it.