Garden Update

The tomatoes are taking happily to the new cages.  The are super easy to train, especially in comparison with the rigamarole we use to do at the rental with a trellis and string.

A view down the tomato cage.  Gotta love that human holding out the camera shadow I've got going on here....

We planted three varieties of squash this morning (mountineer, butternut, buttercup).  We are behind in planting them, but will just hope for the best.  This one is a volunteer so it will be a surprise. 

We've got green tomatoes in some of our cages.  Exciting.  And we still have one last jar of last year's sauce in storage which is way longer than it lasted last year.  We're getting better and better at supplying our demand every year. 

With the peas pulled we had room to add in the peppers.  But, it was a rough, hot, windy week for transplants.  We're hoping they pull through.  Some of them look pretty sad.

Matt is compost crazy.  He loves it.  I find it useful and practical and impressive, but you won't find me out there smelling it and running it through my fingers lovingly the way he does.  He told me this week that when he was going to turn the big pile he stuck his hand in it (as he always does) to see how warm it was getting in the center (he's even got out the thermometer to check more accurately).  But, in this particular instance the heat was so intense in the center he said he jerked his hand back because it was burning him.  I guess that means our pile is pretty active. 

Sad, sad peppers....

A Hungarian wax pepper transplanted weeks ago that is decidedly NOT sad.

We've been pulling the blossoms off the strawberries for this first crop in order to encourage them to set better roots and produce more in their subsequent crops.  But, we missed a few so we occasionally get a surprise strawberry.  Like this little guy!  So sweet and so tiny.

We're attempting to train the volunteer squash.  As the are volunteer we didn't get to exactly choose where they are growing.  Rather than yank them out we've decided to just try to point them in the desirable direction and hope the listen! 

We bent left over bit of metal from the tomato cage project to use in training the vines.  Works well and make scrap into something useful again.  I always like those solutions.

Matt in the middle of his little piece of heaven.  Tomatoes in the foreground, squash and onion in the bed in front of Matt, peppers, cauliflower, and kale in the bed behind him,  rhubarb and strawberries in the very back.

Grow little garden, grow!