Garden 2013 Edition

By this point you've probably assumed that I gave up gardening for parenting this summer, but have no fear--my garden is growing in its full glory; I just haven't had the time to post regular updates on it. In fact, part of the reason for my delay in posting about it is that I got a late start this year (on top of the whole parenting thing). We had snow/freezing temperatures into the beginning of May, and then with William's baptism and my sister's bridal shower Memorial Day weekend, I didn't get around to getting anything planted until right before we left for the beach mid-June. Apparently that hasn't caused too many issues with the success of my garden, though--we have produce coming out our ears.

Here is a current photo of my garden in all its green and seemingly over-grown glory:

I stuck with pretty much all the same vegetables I've done in the past: zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes, green beans, peas, green onion, bell peppers, carrots, and sweet corn. I think this might be my last year for bell peppers though because for whatever reason they just don't grow (my plants started at about six inches when I transplanted them in June and they are now about eight inches. And certainly not "thick" enough to support a pepper). And I don't think we'll get corn this fall; only one of the stalks is really growing, so it won't have another plant to cross-pollinate with (plus it isn't exactly shooting up itself). My tomatoes got an even later start than everything else because the plants I transplanted before we left for the beach mysteriously disappeared while we were gone (for reals--it's not like they were bitten off or died or anything--they were just gone), but thanks to my neighbor I got some new plants in shortly after getting back. And my zucchini. Oh my zucchini. In addition to heat and dryness and everything else, I've battled with a mysterious bug infestation on them for the past two years (check here and here for details). I vowed to be more diligent about monitoring for bugs this year (probably seems a little counter-intuitive since I actually have less time to garden this year thanks to the baby, but whatever), and so far, I think it's actually worked. On more than one occasion, I've caught branches when they were first beginning to droop/show frassing, and upon removing them from the plant actually found larvae inside of them. That may not sound like a good thing, but actually finding the larvae means I'm closer to figuring out what exactly the bugs are (most of the signs are pointing to squash vine borers), plus the fact that I've caught the infected branches before the larvae have a chance to move into the stalk hopefully means the plant will persevere (actually, on one plant, the larvae had grown and moved into the stalk, but I was able to pull it out with a teasers after removing the infected branch. Not going to lie, it was insanely gross and I almost puked).

And now for the proof that we have produce coming out of our ears, here's (most of) what I've harvested already this year.

First pickings on July 20th

Round two on July 31st

Most recent haul on August 4th

And for the record, I'm really not complaining about how much stuff we have; we love the fresh produce. We're just going to be eating lots the next few weeks!