Dormant

Not much going on in my concrete garden lately.

The hanging tomatoes are heat stressed and not producing much;

a few cherries, a miniature Early Girl now and then.

Most of the containers are grouped together under an improvised shade house.

The Better Boy and Yellow Pear are not doing much,

the Yellow Pear has teeny- tiny flowers on it right now.

I harvested all but two very small eggplants the other day.

Without the burden of the fruit it is now producing some buds.

My latest (and last surviving) lettuce in a tub with a few green onions and a Sweet 100.

The last of the carrots; I'll plant some more in August for a fall crop.

The swiss chard behind it just keeps on producing despite the heat.

The watermelon vine seems to want to support just two melons at a time and no more.

The zucchini and crook neck squash behind it has not started producing yet.

Just a lot of male flowers so far.

These melons - Bush Star on the left and cantaloupe in the center - look good,

lots of little melons coming along.

And then there's the honeydew.

It turned sickly so fast that I suspect the bug guy may have sprayed it.

I'll try to nurse it back to health because there are five or six melons on it,

but I don't have much hope for it.

Renewal

Now that we harvested all the ripe melons, ( I think the final count was 14) the melon vines are producing again. I suppose now that they are not devoting all their resources to the ripening fruit they have the energy to devote to new fruit development.

Baby Bush Star

I'm hoping for lots more of these, they were the tastiest of the bunch.

Baby cantaloupe

These were good too, but I've only found one so far.

So that means, of course, that our least favorite,

the honeydew, is going to put out the most fruit.

The watermelon vine is also flowering again, so I'll keep it around for a while longer. The nurseries around here don't have many vegetables in stock right now to replace it with anyway. Just tomatoes and peppers, maybe some herbs. Everything is so stressed from the heat and wind there is really no point in trying to start anything new. I'll hold out for cooler weather.

A Tragic Loss

Sadly, we have lost this Early Girl to some mysterious tomato blight.

My ability to research what it was is limited due to a nasty virus that has hijacked my access to search search engines. Life without Google is like life in the dark ages.

Hackers and spammers are the lowest form of life and I am all for the death penalty.

Luckily, the other tomatoes do not seem to be affected.

We are getting a steady supply of cherries and 3-4 slicing tomatoes each week.

I've have enough right now to make my first salsa tonight, Yay!

Fourth Of July Watermelon

We picked one of the Sugar Baby watermelons to have for the 4th.

(For the record, it was the 11th melon in two weeks!)

After spending the night in the fridge, it looks frosty.

It was nice and red inside but not as seedy as I had read it would be.

It tasted sweet, juicy and delicious.

I am not sure if I will grow them again.

It took a lot of space and resources to grow just two watermelons.

But it was fun to experiment.

Goodbye, Hello

I think I have mentioned my disappointment in the Lemon Cucumbers.

They were thick-skinned and very seedy.

So goodbye Lemon Cucumber.

The roots grew down through the cups on the bottom of the top bucket

and filled the water reservoir on the bottom.

The plant does not drown because there is also air down there

and the water is oxygenated by the flow of fresh water three times a day.

Hello Yellow Pear tomato!

And that's a new Sweet 100 in the corner of the green bucket.

I am having such success with the hanging cherries,

I thought I might as well try a couple more varieties.

Check Out Those Melons!

The melon feast is in full swing.

In the last 10 days we have harvested 7 melons.

Every time I turn around another one slips the vine.

I love how they do that, you dont have to guess, they tell you when they're ready.

Here we have

a Bush Star (L) and a cantaloupe (R).

Another cantaloupe.

They are in the crisper drawer where they should keep well until we need them.

This honeydew is the tastiest one I have ever eaten.

It was also huge, we've been working on it for two days.

This Bush Star cracked on the bottom,

I was lucky to find before the ants got too far in.

The flavor was excellent, sweet and with less of that musky taste that a cantaloupe has.