Garden Update

I've told you about how the weeds were getting ahead of me in the garden and here is a photo of the overgrown pumpkin patch with one corner that I managed to clear of wild grass, weeds, and elm seedling. Since I can't kneel on my arthritic knees I sit on my garden stool on the left in the photo. As you can see, even though I've only cleared a small part of the garden bed, the cart is overflowing. The trash guys hauled that load off this morning and I'm ready to get back to work on the rest of the mess. I even have one small pumpkin growing at the end of an 8 foot long vine that grew beyond this bed and through the rhubarb onto the path. It just amazes me how far those vines spread; another one has grown west across the pathway onto the grass around the pond. The cucumber vines are also spreading out all over the place. Some of the cucumbers covered up the eggplants which are not growing much fruit this year. Last year I kept picking far more Japanese eggplants than we could eat.

The cats love to visit the veggie garden with me and here is Tigger checking out a pumpkin vine.

I set out several Hardy Boy, Early Girl, Roma, and Cherry Tomatoes this spring and they are loaded with fruit that is starting to get ripe. In addition I have a couple of the small yellow Pear Tomatoe plants that came up from seeds because there were so many last year that a lot of them were left on the vines until after frost. They are an old fashioned heritage tomato that can reseeds, unlike most of the modern hybrids. The heritage Green Zebra Tomato is doing very well and I think I will try to save some of the seeds so I can have more next year. I can't be sure that I will be able to find plants of that variety to buy next year.

It istime for me to plant more lettuces, spinach, and cilantro for fall growth and to winter over and give us early spring growth.

Somehow with my muddled mind this year, I thought I had planted a watermelon plant, but when I began pulling out the weeds around the vine the leaves looked wrong, and the fruits were very strange, white and yellow globes with black stickers. When I checked the label I discovered that I had really planted a Lemon Cucumber! I'm used to having Senior moments but this is ridiculous! Oh well, there is always next year.