And two weeks makes a difference, too!

The largest bed of tomato plants. You would think that with all this foliage there would be tons of tomatoes. I think I've seen two or three in the whole bed. On the other side of the house is a bed that looks almost exactly like this one and it is filled with green tomatoes. I think the difference is the soil. The other bed has probably the best soil in our whole garden. This bed still has relatively new and raw soil. Of course, it might be the varieties, too - which are early and which late. We weren't all that careful labeling everything, so we are no longer sure which plants are which. Next year we will be better about that.
Do you remember the photo of the Guatemalan Blue winter squash from two week ago? Here is is now! It must be two feet long, and about ten inches wide.
A butternut squash on the way. I think maybe there are eight or more of these already. We are going to have a bumper crop of winter squash this year.
A young Japanese Red Kuri winter squash. It turns a red-orange when it is mature. I love these young yellow globes.
The squash plants are taking over! They spill into everything. Every few days we have to reroute tendrils from the rosemary bushes or the tomato plants.
One of the potato beds (actually it is three separate planting bags). We have not been brave enough yet to stick our hand in the soil and see if we come out with a potato. Friends have said they do that - just fish around until they feel one that is the right size and take it inside, cook it, and eat it. We are anticipating a bumper crop, and so we are seeking ways to store the potatoes once we harvest them. Some have said just to store them in the ground where they are, but that puts a whole bed out of commission for another planting. Any ideas?
The melon plants have not quite taken over yet, but they are branching out. We still have some of the lovely red poppies in our lower yard.
And it was a lovely day yesterday for drying sheets and towels! They smell so good after a day of hanging in the air. We had the most incredibly wonderful week of cool weather. It is totally out of character for mid-July, and we loved every minute of it. Temperatures are slowly on the rise this week.

Thank you for reading along!

What a difference a month makes!

Once everything was planted out in the gardens, the action slowed down a bit. We were away for a week, so I have not posted in a while. I just took a few photos, and, as I looked back at the Memorial Day weekend post, I see what a dramatic change there has been! Vegetation abounds. The winter squash plants are spilling over their boxes and taking over the yard. Here is the beginning of a Guatemalan Blue. These things can get huge, and are reminiscent of torpedoes. We grow one last summer that was at least a foot and a half long, maybe more. There are also a few very small Buttercup and Butternut squashes, but I don't think I have yet spied a Japanese Red Kuri. All the squash beds are watered by soaker hoses in the morning and by hand in the afternoon. Just yesterday we fed everything with a batch of compost tea.
The potatoes are in bloom! This is very exciting as we have never been this successful with potatoes. Of course, it will be a while until we know there actually are potatoes, but the blooms are very promising. We have all the potatoes on soaker hoses; we water with the hoses in the morning and overhead by hand in the afternoon.
The two beds of tomato plants that went in the ground first are huge! These are watered morning and afternoon with t-tape, so only ground watering, not overhead. For all their foliage, though, there are only very few signs of fruit developing. But it just this week really got hot, and I think that's the weather they love. So, we will see.

The new crop of lettuces is just beginning to be big enough to give us some leaves for salads. They are doing well in this heat under shade cloth. The smallest plants are the watermelons and honeydews that were the last to be planted, but they are also beginning to grow. What is not doing stunningly well are the onion plants; it's possible that we just started them too late. They are at least big enough to be eaten as green onions if we decide to give up on them.

So, for a while it will be just watering and feeding and troubleshooting. So far, there does not seem to be any kind of pest damage, and the foliage in the boxes is getting full enough now that even the cats don't get in and dig.