Relax and Watch the Veggies Grow

Ahhhh... doesn't this look comfy? I love lazy mid-summer days.



The weather in New England is beautiful. We don't get sizzling heat (at least for the most part unless we get a heat wave) and it's the perfect time to enjoy all the hard work I put into the garden during the spring planting season.

Let's take a little break and see how the veggie garden is doing.

Bed #1 looks great! I've got tomatoes (12 plants - all different varieties), 6 sweet pepper plants, and 6 eggplants. So far this year my tomatoes look better than any other previous year. I think the raised bed made a huge difference. The soil is much richer and I don't have to water as often. Today I sprayed the tomatoes with copper fungicide since late blight is prevalent in our area. Thankfully I have no signs of it so I'd like to keep it that way.



No red tomatoes yet, but tons of green ones of all sizes. Here's a small one, but I've got many large tomatoes that I'm just drooling over waiting for them to get red. A few are pink so they are getting there.



The eggplants are small but healthy with many flowers and a few tiny fruit.



This pepper is almost ready to pick.


Bed #2 has carrots on the far left, parsley, bush green beans, and cucumbers. I'll start harvesting the beans this week.


The cucumbers are doing well. Here's a close look at a baby cuke.



Bed #3 has broccoli, several herbs, beets, cabbage, and cauliflower. I had difficulty early on with leaf loopers but stomped them out with Spinosa. The biggest challenge with maintaining this bed is keeping the slugs away. They've done more damage than anything else.


A floret growing nicely.



The cabbage is starting to form.


Bed #4 has onions, lettuce, basil, swiss chard, and butternut squash over on the far right. I didn't think the squash would grow so I just stuck it in this bed, now it's taking over as winter squash always do. I've asked Andy to build me tepees for them to vine up.


Bed #5 is the squash bed. I have zucchini and yellow squash here. They've almost doubled their size in the short few days since I took this picture - how fast they grow always amazes me.


You'll notice in the back of the squash bed are some container plants of tomatoes. These are the ones that I grew from seed and started very late. I didn't think they'd make it but they did and by the time they turned around I had already bought plants and put them in the ground so I had to get some containers for these.

The zucchini I grew from seed. The variety is Cashflow from Johnny Seeds. I picked these 2 today - my first ones of the season!


The yellow squash is Zephyr from Johnny Seeds. I love the 2 tone color. I can't wait to taste one.

Here a flower is starting to form on the winter squash. This is butternut squash - Waltham by Johnny Seeds.


I had some left over pepper plants so I stuck them in some bright pink buckets. I love the color they add to the garden. These are small plants for this late in the season but they are doing well and have tiny peppers on them.



Finally, here's the potato bed. I sprayed them with copper fungicide as a preventative measure against late blight. Today Andy and I hilled them with Mainly Mulch straw mix. I'll show you in another post later this week how we did it.



The last bed I don't have a picture of since there is nothing to show. It had the snap peas in it and I pulled the plants out last week since they were done for the season. We got nice harvests from them but not as much as I had hoped. Next year I'm going to put in a few more plants to get a higher yield. The peas were the sweetest ever and we enjoyed them for many meals. In a few weeks I'll be sowing in this empty bed for some fall crops of kale, collard greens, and lettuce.