Garden Report

Raspberries in the garden are slowing down. And that's where all the mosquitoes live. The goofy raspberries growing under the lilac bush, under the eaves of the house, those are still still producing well. The mosquito situation there has been downgraded from "atrocious and unbearable" to just "bad."

I see no fruit on the Hubbard squash vines yet, but the vines are huge and healthy and flowering.

Cucumber vines are the same, but they now have itty-bitty cukes that will need 3-6 days yet before we can start harvesting little ones.

A few tomatoes have come indoors. The plants are huge. I was worried I pruned them too much. Uh, no. They're fine. Almost too lush, still.

Kohlrabi and spinach are done. Second planting of lettuce is beginning to peek through. Carrots just do NOT want to grow. Ate half of the second planting of beets in last weekend's stew.

Cilantro doesn't want to grow either. Either it pokes along doing nothing. Or it grows big fast and then --BOOM-- goes to seed and the leaves get all thin and spindly. Don't know what to do about that.

Basil is plenteous. Haven't gotten around to making pesto yet. Just slapping leaves onto sandwiches or into salads.

My one lonely zucchini plant is producing just about the right amount of zucchini for our family ... so long as I keep nabbing those boogers off the vine when they're 7" long instead of 27".

Yesterday the green beans were tiny little threads. Today they're nearly big enough to pick. Tomorrow I douse myself in DEET and then harvest a small batch of beans. Lots of beans didn't germinate. And the growin-like-crazy cukes and winter squash took over the place where I was going to put my third planting of beans. So they'll be sparse this summer.

Blackberries are looking great! Grapes are looking pitiful. There were only a few small clusters, but most of them withered up on the vine. Hmmm. I hope that's not a long-term problem.

None of the gladiolas came up. Oh well. I like food better than flowers anyway.

Gotta figure out how to help the apple trees. They were great last year, even though that was their first year in the ground. I wonder what did I did wrong.

Asparagus continuing to establish itself nicely for future years.

My perennial onions (also known as "walking onions") have established themselves beautifully. Backwoods Home once mentioned that these can give you onions nearly year-round, and they also make a good deer deterrent for the garden. Win-win situation, it sounds like to me!

We did MUCH work on the strawberry patch in late June and early July. Ripped out half the patch (in stripes), and dug up the dirt aisles so that runners could set down roots and start developing next year's plants. Looking at how few and tiny they are right now, I can't imagine they could possibly give us berries next year. I will have to remember this year's over-crowded patch, and be heartless next spring in digging out the aisles of plants that remain at the moment, allowing the current dirt-aisles to become the lush plants which will bear.