We ate our first tomatoes this weekend, roma cherry tomatoes. Mmm.
Since the last update in late May, we’ve eaten a ton of lettuce, and it’s still growing. Almost everything is starting to bolt, so I’ve been clearing out whole plants and planting swiss chard in the empty spots. I’ve been planting chard and radishes weekly since late June and have seedlings coming up. Right now they’re in random places where I’ve cleared out other things; eventually the chard will replace the lettuce. I rarely have luck with chard but I keep trying it. I want greens.
We’ve gotten about a dozen snow peas including the ones still on the plants. This might be the last year I try peas. They don’t like me.
All the tomato plants have flowers and little green tomatoes, even the mystery volunteer in the front garden. Now I know it makes round tomatoes. The volunteer squashes have bloomed but don’t seem to be producing squash, which is what my non-volunteers usually do as well (and I have at least two kinds of volunteer squash, a bush variety and a climbing variety). I’ve seen one eggplant flower but no fruit. When my parents were here, they brought eggplant from their garden, so I took one out to show to my plants. It didn’t seem to inspire them.
My chives have been dropping seeds into the tomato pot next to them, so there are tiny chives coming up there. I’ve collected seeds and sprinkled them in the flower beds where I want chives, but of course there they’re refusing to grow. I also planted four kinds of mint hoping that will take over, but I think some of the mint won’t survive the winter. If not, next year I’ll put in peppermint. I want herbs to take over from the weeds.
My coneflower and prairie dock are growing. The coneflower had a run-in with a rabbit (which have been helping me eat the lettuce) but has sprouted new leaves. I put these perennials in the vegetable bed; with luck I won’t dig them up in the fall or next spring.
Rabbits have also been eating my red bell pepper and my marigolds. The poor pepper keeps surviving but it’s about 3 inches tall and trying to flower. The marigolds, after I propped their pot up on empty paint cans, might be recovering.
Apparently the rabbits around here are getting smarter or hungrier. Last year they ignored anything in a pot, they stayed away from the marigolds in the flower beds, and they didn’t dig trenches through my lettuce.