Monday, I pulled up two small zucchini plants and moved them to milk jugs. They were getting smothered by the other zucchini and the watermelon. I picked this:
(and apparently can't rotate it)
The squash was on the part of the plant where they always rot. I got it in this time, haha
The one neon green tomato was for my Monday lunch. Then I saw the other two with bad spots in them, so I grabbed for those fried green tomatoes too. Yummo
Our second batch of heirloom pickling cucumbers are blooming. These are the ones I plan to use for seeds next year. There are six plants, I hope we get another ten+ pounds eating off them before the frost.
I also got two flower planters of leaf lettuce planted. Our first batch of lettuce burned up, we had a very hot summer very early. I hope by using a planter, the lettuce will retain water.
On Tuesday, I picked lots and lots of cucumber and two tomatoes. The pretty little red one has ant damage on the bottom. I picked the big one to finish ripening inside so it would stay nice. It is probably the largest tomato that has been picked.
I was surprised to see my lettuce sprouted on Wednesday. The bag of miracle grow was in the driveway and it was boiling hot when I planted the seeds. I was a little worried it was too hot. Tada!
Wednesdays picking includes another zucchini!
On Thursday I discovered you can't grow zucchini in a milk jug. I moved them to a corner of the cucumber bed before they totally died.
More bug bitten tomatoes for lunch. I have decided it is better to pick them yellow and let them ripen on my counter, than to lose them to bugs. I want to keep pesticides out of the garden so I am willing to lose a little flavor. I am going to try to use the seeds from that mutant cucumber.
Next year we will do little yellow pear tomatoes. These cherry tomatoes are huge for a little tomato and take forever to turn red. Maybe I can do several varieties of little ones. In my head, I was going to roast tomatoes for freezer sauce blah blah. I don't think we will get enough to even try that.
I officially gave up on cucumbers and squash on Friday.
The cucumbers went from beautiful green leaves to yellow, curling and gross in a couple of days. I also found two one pound + yellow cucumbers. Even the little ones were growing yellow. Next year we will put a row of cucumber on a trellis of some sort along the backside of the house across three beds. That should give us 8 in each bed, 24 total. I think properly trellised, that will give us more cucumbers than the mess we grew this year. The vines grew 8-10 feet all over each other into our mulch, into the tomatoes, and into the beans. I had to lift massive amounts of greenery to find the cucumbers.
The squash had 6 squash on it, 3 rotted. Its leaves also turned yellow and the whole plant looked pitiful. I had problems with rotting squash this year. We have decided not to grow that kind anymore. Not having a garden before, I didn't know how different kinds grew. These squash kept curling on the ground and rotting. My zucchini is growing straight up from the center of the plant. It isn't touching the ground at all. So next year, no yellow squash, and I will do a couple of varieties of zucchini instead.
I took three zucchini from their bed and put them in the old squash spots. We just don't have enough dirt in that long skinny bed for big plants. Since I started trimming the squash, my pepper plants grew from 6 inches to 18 inches. Like in a week. Does anyone know if I have a chance of getting a pepper off them? Should I fertilize and see? The plants look really nice, dark green glossy leaves.
And this is what I picked today, more yellow stuff to ripen inside.
Oh, and I lost all my herbs. Cats decided to knock over the buckets and poop in them. Joy.
We have red spiders in the watermelon. I squished all these:
I also squished 20 long skinny big beetle things, that was satisfying. My garden, MY vegetables.
Corn!
These beans look so much better than the last. And there is my gorgeous zucchini plant along with its two substandard siblings.
This weekend I learned that I cannot successfully transplant zucchini, I killed all five plants. oops. I did pick more yellow stuff.
It has been ripening beautifully on my counter too.
This week we picked (in ounces)
| Cucumbers | 83.85 |
| Yellow Squash | 15.9 |
| Tomatoes | 87.7 |
| Cherry Tomatoes | 35.4 |
| Zuchinni | 19.25 |
15.13 pounds :)
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