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.