Garden Update

We have several zucchini blossoms

and pretty purple flowers on the eggplant.

The cucumber plants have finally sprung into action with a couple of flowers

and the tomato plants are growing like crazy, with lots of little green tomatoes awaiting sun to turn them red, yellow, and purple. 

I've been feeding them an organic fish emulsion every two weeks, and I hope they like it.

The second batch of arugula I planted between two rows of scallions to keep pests away looks pretty good,

but I see a few holes, so I'm going to pick some for dinner tonight before the bugs eat the rest.

The leeks are starting to look less like blades of grass and more like future leeks.

The scallions still look like blades of grass, but they don't have as far to grow.

Did you know that deer love edamame?

We learned that the hard way, but the plants they mowed over in one night seem to be coming back with a few leaves.  I sprayed around the perimeter to keep the deer at bay, and planted more that are already sprouting.

The shallots have been wilting for weeks, and I noticed that some of the green tops had started to deteriorate, so I pulled those.  They were not fully formed, and seemed...wet and mushy. 

But there were others that were bulging out of the ground,

so I pulled a couple of those, too, and they look good. 

I'm going to leave the rest in there for a little while longer, and hope they bulge out of the ground, rather than turn to mush.

We have a similar situation with our garlic.  Some of the stalks seem to have completely deteriorated.  Rot?

But others look okay.  They say you should harvest garlic when the bottom few leaves begin to turn yellow, and we pulled a few of those, too.

Only one of them is as big as it should be, so we're leaving the rest in for a while.  Once we harvest the garlic and shallots, we need to let them cure for a few weeks before we cut off the stalks and store them.

Last, the tops of carrots are supposed to bulge out of the ground to signal that they're ready.  We thought we saw a couple of orange tops and dug these up.

I should have put them next to a ruler so you could see they are only a couple of inches long.  They were definitely not ready, and I wonder if they were popping out of the ground because they were planted too close together.  I never "thinned" them when they sprouted, but I will do that when I plant the next batch. It's a learning process. In the meantime, I hope they're all not stunted and deformed.  We'll wait a few more weeks to take another look.

The early-morning, mid-July garden:

And a much prettier view to its right:

The hydrangea and lavender are in full bloom.  I'd like to harvest some of that lavender, but the bees seem to really like it, so I'll leave it for now.