Hello Garden Gals and Guys! It’s July! Can you believe it?? I was hoping to have my first ripe tomato by July 4th so I could take a picture and share it with you. Although I do have quite a few maters on the vine, none are ready for harvest yet.
I do have lots of great pictures to share with you of Fat Earth. So, here we go.
First up are some of the sandwich tomatoes, these are a variety called ‘Celebrity’. There’s probably about ten total and at least forty more blooms that will hopefully produce fruit.
Here is my tomato and pepper forest. In the middle are yellow pear tomatoes (cherry tomatoes). To the left of the really tall ones are my ‘Roma’ variety (plum) and they are doing okay, I guess. Only about five or six of them so far. The cherry maters are definitely the winning producers in here.
Here is a close-up of the yellow pear tomatoes. They are really going wild. I can’t wait for them to ripen!
I counted at least 60 with at least another 40 or 50 blooms following closely behind. Next up, peppers. I FINALLY have sweet peppers! I was about to give up on these babies.
If you look closely behind that one adorable baby pepper, you can see — kind of up and to the right — three more baby peppers. The other two plants are also full of blooms now, so I think these plants will have a nice harvest for me by July’s end.
My pumpkin finally opened its flowers last night. I know it was last night because when I was out there yesterday, all the flowers were closed. That was concerning me because bees can’t get in there to pollinate. But I awoke this morning to this:
There are quite a few blooms now open. I really hope I get some great pumpkins for Halloween this year. Next up are my eggplants. I love their blooms. Purple is my absolute favorite color, and the yellow against it is just so striking.
You can see (below) the eggplants finally beginning to form! Yeah! My mom will be so happy!!
The cucumbers have lots of flowers, but only a few cukes right now. I’m watching them closely. I may need to get out there and do some pollination by hand. There’s usually a lot more fruit by now. This variety is called ‘Japanese Long’. They grow…well…long and very skinny.
Below are the ‘Straight Eight’ variety. My favorite pickling variety to grow. My oldest son wants me to make him pickles again. So, as long as I get enough cukes, I will grant his request.
My beans are growing. They are in two different sections of my garden. Here are the ones I planted from seed.
They’ve got flowers on them, but no beans yet. Below are the plants I bought from my local nursery. Look! Baby beans!! Awwwwwwww
I also spotted some jalapenos growing nicely.
Here is my favorite thing growing in the garden this year! Tomatillos. They are a green tomato, and they are used to make, among other things, salsa verde, which I plan on making quite a bit of this year. I love these plants because they grow wide, not tall. I didn’t cage mine, so they just laid over and sprawled, but that’s fine with me. They are the bigger plants you see there.
I like growing tomatillos, because before the fruits form, they put out these really cool Japanese lantern-type husks. The tomatillos grow secretly inside. Then one day, bam! They have filled the husk completely and peek out at the bottom. Here’s some pictures of the husks.
Last, but not least, is my watermelon plant. It’s sprawling nicely now. I’m really hoping I get at least three or four nice-sized ones.
Do you like garden bling? It’s one of my favorite things when I go out in the garden really early. I’m always amazed how the dew forms in perfect little beads around the edges of all the leaves on my plants.
So pretty. Last, but not least, here is one of my cats, Rameses. He watches me from the window, looking at me as if to say “gardening is too much work.”
And to give you a complete visual on how hard he is chillin’, here he is from inside the laundry room:
Yeah. Exactly. He sits there all the time. That’s his favorite spot. He just watches me, or the birds flying, or the chickens grazing. He’s lazy, but SO cute, so I let him stay. 🙂
So, that’s it garden gals and guys! I’m a little worried about my garden. I have a lot of flowers but not as many veggies forming. I see quite a few bees flying around. I’ve learned that they love the oregano that I have let flower. I do see them on my maters and cukes, though, so I am keeping my fingers crossed.
What have you got growin’ on in your gardens?? Any harvests yet?? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
Until next time….
Happy farming!!