Early July Cantaloupes and Onions

Cantaloupe! I've got lots growing, luckily they're all different sizes. Only one big one, but five medium size ones, and a handful of thumb down to marble sized babies.

The pear tomato bush is full of clusters of greenish lightbulb shaped tomatoes. I can't wait until they turn solid yellow! They don't taste too much different from a regular cherry tomato, but the seeds are smaller. Something different, and they do look pretty on a salad along with red tomatoes. Plus, the birds don't bother them as much, unlike the cherry tomatoes I had to cover with bird netting.

The Bonnie Original is the tomato plant with the most green ones right now. These two, a couple on the other side, one biggish one near the bottom. A few on the cherry tomato bush too, but still nothing but blooms on the red beefsteak tomato plant.

The onions are doing fine also, getting bigger, but slowly. Here's the largest - do you think I need to put more dirt around it? I haven't tried wiggling or pulling on it, so I don't know how solid it's in there.

End of June Harvest

Just a quick post—I was away for the weekend and came home to a nice lot of ripe veggies:

That's one last snowpea, but paired with my very first yellow pear tomato. The bush is loaded with them, so I predict a lot more! I also picked six banana peppers, eighteen cherry tomatoes, and two medium sized tomatoes that will be good for slicing. And my black-eye peas are producing pea-pods too! I only saw two pods with peas big enough to pick today, and I've got to admit that I just ate them raw. The peas, I mean, not the pods, lol

How does YOUR garden grow?

End of May Garden update

Well, it's the end of May, and here's the State of the Container Garden. My onions are doing okay, and the cauliflower in the wading pool with them are nicely leafy - but no cauliflower showing yet. I keep peeking down into the middle of the leaves, hoping to see something down there, but nothing.

The Better Boy tomato plant has several small and these two bigger green tomatoes:

I have this one nice sized banana pepper (about three inches long) and lots of buds and little ones that're about the size of the end of your pinky finger:

My snowpeas are blooming and there's lots of tiny snowpeas started, all about an inch long, so by June 1, betcha I'll be eating my first snowpea:

Here's the cantaloupe, nothing but lots of green leaves. I'm a long way from needing to trellis these, aren't I? I'm going to try growing them up, and suspending the melons in little mesh sacks attached to the trellis.

The yellow bell pepper plant isn't as far along as the banana pepper, it's just now starting to have little buds:

As for my other tomatoes, they're not doing as well. The Bonnie Original has a couple of little tomatoes on it, as does the yellow pear tomato and the Beefsteak tomato. The winner for this season, so far, is the Cherry tomato. It's thick with tomatoes of all sizes. I've had ONE ripe tomato from this bush so far, the birds pecked holes in several others. Now I've got it surrounded by bird netting. It's difficult to see unless you look at the CD there in the pot:

People have asked me about the CD's. I had heard they'd be birdscare, that the birds would see their reflection and fly away. It hasn't worked this year! I do like watering with them in there though, if you water on the CD, the stream from the hose doesn't dig holes in the dirt, instead it splatters out flat, if that makes sense.

How does YOUR garden grow?

More Spring Planting

Went and spent some hard-earned cash at Home Depot last night on the way home from work. Then had to haul the two big bags of dirt, a new plant pot, one more tomato cage, some seeds, and three more plants around to the back patio. Here's what I ended up with. First, that banana pepper plant I said I still wanted:

I was also tempted to try yellow pear tomatoes this year. I think it was Tazzie that mentioned them in response to my problem with birds—because these tomatoes don't get red, birds're less attracted to them. They're about the size of cherry tomatoes, but longer, with an added pear shaped blob. Supposed to taste great too!

I also got some Vidalia onions, a whole little round blob of them. I think you call them starters? Then on my way to the front of the store, I passed a rack with more plants and I couldn't resist some early cauliflowers. These are supposed to be done in 50 days, so if that's true, I'll get a harvest at the beginning of June, before it gets too hot for them. I put those in the wading pool, onions toward the back:

I had so many onions that I put a few in some of the tomato containers, around the edges. It seems like my tomatoes always grow pretty tall, and the roots never extend out to the top edge of the containers, (I plant them deep) so maybe the pairing will work.

So here's the state of my containers now, and I think this'll do me for the summer. I'm not at all sure about the cowpeas in the windowbox—the snow peas do wonderfully there, so maybe these will too? And the cantaloupe in containers is new for me. I may need to get tomato cages for them, and suspend the cantaloupes from the wire with little net bags? I'll have to do some research. All suggestions welcome! How does YOUR garden grow?