early summer update

This always feels like mid-summer to me, but we're really at the start of things, aren't we?

Like everyone, I've been busy, and don't update much, but here's a quickie status on things.

Went camping, and remembered you can cook pretty awesome meals with only one pan and three utensils (promptly forgot that when I got home though).  And local, homegrown ingredients are still good a thousand miles away:


breakfast one day: local bacon, our eggs, homemade sourdough english muffins (homemade jam not shown :)  )

When we got home, everything in the garden was HUGE.  Tons of rain while we were gone.  And we didn't miss strawberry season, so went to a U-pick and froze a bunch of quarts for winter snacking.  Because really, strawberries are nice and all, but THESE will be coming in just about all summer, in delightful pints at a time:


Here's a gardening tip:  Learn to love the things that are EASY.  Strawberries are little divas, picky about the weather and location.  The ginormous raspberry patch is mostly from a few dug up plants from our last apartment backyard, and they are delicious.  I'm the same way with our pears--apples are a pain in the butt to grow organically, but our pear tree is a monster of happy production.

Anyway, moving on--The Project June Tomato is kind of a bust.  Yes it's happy, and loaded with fruit, but alas, none are ripening yet.


And the regular tomatoes are really just about caught up, even planted many weeks later:


I picked these beauties today:

And I'm really happy about the cucumbers this year:

These are from Fedco, and were described as thus:

 "Compact vines with smaller-than-normal leaves save space and make finding the cucumbers much easier. And despite the emaciated appearance of the plants, there are a huge number of cukes to find. "

I'll give you compact vines, but emaciated?   Easy to find?    No complaints, though, I'm looking forward to making pickles soon!


We do have some downsides, really.  I didn't plant enough peas (we have all snap peas, and not enough  of the shelling type).  My brassicas were hit hard by slugs, so that overplanting actually worked out as I don't have that many usable cabbages.  And the broccoli is succumbing to rot due to all the rain and will probably not live for side shoots (heads were fine though).  I'll going to plant some new ones for the fall, but I usually don't have to do that.

But, we're picking our first zucchini this week, eggplants and peppers are forming, and the majority of the plants are healthy and growing fast, summer is here!