July garden update

We planted the garden a little over a month ago, so I thought it was time for an update. I took these pictures last week, and it seems like so much has already changed in just those few days -- it's amazing how quickly Mother Nature works.

Here's the whole garden. With the exception of the cauliflower, everything is doing really well. But cauliflower is supposed to be a little finicky and hard to grow, so we're not to worried about that one.

The cucumbers are one of my favorite plants to watch grow. I just love the delicate-looking tendrils wrapping around the trellis and the bright yellow flowers. You can see a baby cuke in this picture near the lower left corner -- that one is pretty close to picking stage now.

As usual, the beans are thriving. There are lots of flowers, and this over-achieving stalk has already passed the top of the bean tower.

The pepper plants all have fruits. They haven't gotten much bigger the last week, but we'll be patient.

The San Marzano tomato (above) is growing like gangbusters. The night I took this photo, my sister counted about thirty tomatoes, but tonight she reported there are fifty-four. I can't wait until some of them are ripe so I can make margherita pizza with our tomatoes and basil.

We also have about fifteen black plum tomatoes coming in (below). The third tomato plant, Mr. Stripey, has blooms, but not any fruit just yet.

I didn't get pictures of the Swiss chard or sunburst squash, so I'll be sure to include them in the next update. I do, though, have one last picture of the vegetable garden -- the rhubarb.

That's my sister's hand so you can get a better idea of how big the rhubarb is. It amazes me every time I look at it. I really need to use some of the rhubarb this year; I have a delicious recipe for frosted rhubarb cookies from my aunt.

The flowers by the alley are also starting to bloom. First is the echinacea, and then the Prairie Blazing Star.

So our late start in the garden doesn't seemed to have hampered anything. The weeds are thriving, too! While we don't have to do a lot of weeding in the garden because of the black covering on the ground, we do have plenty of weeding along the edges of the garden, in the flower bed and on the sidewalk and patio. One of these days we'll have to tackle that project.





















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