The lettuce decided to start growing true leaves after today’s watering.

However, they are leaning a lot to reach the light since we only have one:

But it’s enough to grow things so I’m happy. More celery is coming up, the onions are all showing green stems and we now have tomatoes sprouting:

They look a little pale and weak I think, I’ll watch them carefully.

I thinned out a few lettuce and cabbage, even as thin as my fingers are I still managed to get too many seeds in a couple spots, one had 6 in the same spot. Oops. I should have used the tweezers like I thought of last year!

In other news, we got a wicked rain storm that knocked out our DSL for a few hours yesterday and all night til after noon today, but my 2 year old didn’t mind a bit:

Oh to be 2 again :lol It took me 20 minutes to get all the mud off the kitchen floor when he came in, and we stripped him right at the door and took him to a nice warm bath!

I really did mess up with the tomatoes :lol They’re all falling all over the place and planted so close together that a lot are falling into the middle of the whole mess and ripening and I can’t see them. There’s hundreds of tomatoes. It’s insanity.

Here’s the first group of tomatoes. About half were on the vines, ready to pick and the other half were on the ground. Most are Romas, but there’s a few Early Girl and a small Beefsteak or two in there. I made salsa and froze it today with the ripest ones :bounce

Bad stuff’ll happen….weeds will take over so badly you can’t catch up and all you can hope for it to clear little areas around the still producing plants so they aren’t choked out. Tomatoes will grow so insanely big they’ll all fall over and you were dumb and planted them so close together you can’t untangle them (I’ll be canning tomatoes here soon though!). Cucumbers will be so thick and thorny that is a risk of death to pick anything. One squash plant will completely take over the onions.

Yeah, I’m keeping Earth Juice around :thumb But laying down better weed control next time! It’s really bad, I’m not kidding. Maybe I’ll take a picture if I think I can deal with the embarrassment :lol

Wow. I haven’t even set foot in the garden in 3-4 days because of the heat then rain and I was thrilled by what I found. Our first red roma tomatoes, crooknecks and zucchini, lots of corn and more. Check it all out :thumb

And the crookneck squash siamese twin that wants to be a porn star:

Just a general update on how things are going in the Garden of Eatin’ today.

The weeds are taking over. I need to get out there and attack with the weed whacker, it’s that bad. It’s not stopping things from growing, so that much is good! But it won’t happen in the next few days…yesterday we had 100F+ temps, today we’re due for 105F and tomorrow is supposed to be 100F, and Sunday 90F…temps should be back in the mid 70s on Monday, so I’ll plan on going lots of work in the garden then, with before after after pics.

The tomato stake experiement has literally been a giant FLOP. As soon as the tomatoes started getting big, the plants got so heavy and thick they’ve tipped over, breaking the stakes and I have lots of tomatoes on the ground at risk from bugs…trying to keep them UP but they just keep growing and falling more :help

The corn is nearly 7′ high with lots of ears. I think we might have some grilled steak and corn for dinner tonight.

The lemon cucumbers are finally growing, well….like taking over their corner of the garden. I definitely planted too many. And the little vines have built in protection to keep me from picking too early, their thorns leave me bleeding when I try.

The strawberries stopped producing fruit all together after giving us hardly anything and are producing runners like crazy. I tried stopped that to see if it would encourage fruit, but it didn’t.

I’ve gotten 6 gigantic zucchini now and there’s lots more growing. I’ll be shredding and freezing it this weekend. Those suckers grow fast!

The crookneck is finally starting to grow fruit, but only after the plant grew to “Little Shop of Horrors” porportions.

Out one pumpkin is about basketball sized and just starting to turn orange.

Potatoes will finish being harvested tonight, there’s 3 plants left and I want to make potato salad. I forgot to write down the ingredients I used last time, I’ll do that this weekend and post the recipe

Yes, I do have a “thing” for using the Wizard of Oz themed titles :p

Crooknecks:

Zucchinis:

Roma tomatoes:

Beefsteak tomato:

Corn:

Green beans:

The thyme is FINALLY growing!

And the parsley is ready to get cut again:

I have 2 a/c units in the garage. WHY AM I HOT? Oh yeah, cause they’re in the garage. WHY?!?! Oh, cause it costs an ARM and a LEG to run them. Stupid money. Too bad I can’t barter with the power company…here, have some corn. Sigh.

I HAVE TOMATOES! Yay!! Shaking them worked. Maybe they thought I was threatening them?

I couldn’t wait to get out and get pictures…I’m like a kid opening presents with this garden :lol

Here’s a pea pod:

One of the ripening strawberries:

And the tomatoes with their new supports (the smaller plants are the early girls that I started from seed much later then the beefsteak and roma)…I wasn’t able to get a decent shot of the flowers, my camera has been having issues focusing:

The biggest corn:

And in other news, I went to Fordyce farms and got a 1/2 flat of strawberries for way more then they are worth and made jam:

I still have enough to do another batch of 4 pints, which I’ll get done today before they go bad:

(sometime…around visiting my dad and working and getting the house cleaned for my brother and his family that is coming Monday :dizzy )…Not gonna be a relaxing weekend!

I’m so excited I can’t stand it :lol

I bought plant stakes at the Grocery Outlet yesterday and got plant tape at Lowes today (last roll in the whole store) and went out and took out the tomato cages I had (they were given to me, so no loss) and tied up the tomatoes to the stakes… everything I’ve read about the cages say they are just bad business for growing good plants. Pictures tomorrow – they’re starting to flower! I do have to take back what I said about the tomatoes loving being flooded, the 4 of them that got the most water aren’t so thrilled. I’m letting the area dry out well (not too well) so the roots can recover from being drowned.

Then I tied up the sagging peas… had I done the trellis vertically in the first place, the peas would have a good hold on the twine, but they are heavy now and have a hard time holding themselves up. The tape helped immensely – they’re much taller! And – I have pea pods! At least a dozen, both sugar snap and oregon snap, with a couple ready to pick so I did. I haven’t had snap peas in many years and I might be biased, but they were really freaking tasty. I’ll get pictures of the smaller ones I left on the vine tomorrow.

There are many more strawberries with a couple turning red, which of course I’ll get pictures off, and I dug into the potatoes and found a teeny little russet and a teeny little red potato…I covered them back up to keep growing and can’t wait til I can take a picture of their harvest!

The broccoli is growing quickly, as it the lettuce and the parsley – I’m going to have to cut some soon and dry it. I bought more basil seeds, 4 types and will try them again. The corn is crazy…we drove by some corn fields yesterday on the way to visit my dad and mine are thicker and much livlier

I want to be able to buy a house with land so I can farm so bad!!

There hasn’t really been much to blog about. I’m back to watering, the rain went away again. The weather’s perfect, been about 70 so not too hot. Everything is growing well except the damn basil. I’ll replant. Oh, the watermelons aren’t doing great either. Seem to be a lot of bugs getting to them – they didn’t get a nematode application. The potatoes are flowering, very pretty purple and yellow blooms. I need to get more tomato cages, a couple more are finally big enough to need them. That’s about it today :cool