abhege said:Tomatoes are really looking great!

They are growing like crazy. You have to peer into the folliage to see the green fruits which are not very big.


But I found some ripe ones on Sugery and one on Sungold. Lets see June 24th is an all time record for earliest ripe tomatoes. But really I will have to wait on others as nothing else is getting a blush of color yet.


I have this yellow zucchini today and I accidently cut off the tiny one too by mistake.



Here is my little harvest today of zucs and toms.

Tee hee. Tiny squash will still be tasty

Perfect for pickling size if I did pickling ha-ha.

Look at this. The cavilli zucchini that I started as seeds are now much bigger than the Elite zucchini I bought as seedlings. And both were planted out in their pots at the same time. And the cavilli were much smaller when transplanting. Cavilli first picture, elite second picture.

Was tis picture before you clipped the small yellow squash? I see a small one in the picture.

Yes, the picture was taken early before I cut off the squash fruits. Silly me cutting the baby one.

I harvested 3 nice zucchini this morning! The zucchini plant must be 3 times the size of the yellow squash plant. Picked a few more snow peas and edible pod peas too.

Pardon weeds in my photos. I do the best I can.

With a Sharpie Marker on the leaf for size. If you look close at the back you can see a couple leaves of the yellow squash.


the yellow squash


Long beans almost tall enough to be trained to the fence


So far cucumber Green Dragon is leading among all the new ones I am trying. Great germination, fast growing, great looking plants, flowering already.

Good looking squash plants.

Hurray Juli for you first zucchini of the season. That zucchini does look really healthy. Wonder why the yellow squash is so small? I thought that the yellow usually are bigger than the zucchinis.

Never mind weeds, everyone has weeds. They grow like, well, weeds!

The yard long beans take some training to get going climbing but once they do then watch out. They will take off like mad. The great part is that they love the hot weather. Never even slow down in the heat and humidity of summer. In fact I am sure they feel right at home. Yours are looking very good. I think they are as tall as mine and mine were planted before yours.

Great looking cucumber plants. I see a female flower there with a little cucumber. I am sure there are plenty of other flowers on it also.

Oh, I wanted to add I have small cucumbers and plenty of flowers on my burpless and straight eight cucumbers. But my Camilla cuke plants have grown the most and wow oh wow are they loaded with will be fruit as all the flowers are female. Flowers not open yet but I see them. Don't know if the other varieties of cukes have anything set as I didn't notice.

Well, I worked on the root veggie garden. I have it nice and raked some more and I have my rows laid out and measured. The rows go across the 4 foot way. I have room for 8 rows of turnips, 2 of each of my four kinds. 2 rows of golden beets, two rows of kolrabi, two rows of rutabaga. One row of parsnips and one of carrots or I can skip the carrotts and do two rows of parsnips instead. That uses up the room there and believe me I didn't leave extra space.

Tomorrow I will plant the seeds. I can't do much for now but I would like to extend this garden more down into the TB iris section. I figgure if I could relocate three more iris It would be good and give me an extra row or two of veggies. I would like to grow onions but I am too late for onions now anyway.

For now I want to get what I have planted and call it a success. Want to be done with the planting and want seedlings to come up. Will have to wait as the seedlings can't come up until I plant the seeds!

Rita, not sure if you're aware but you don't have to plant your veggies in rows. You can plant in a grid. So say turnips are planted 4" apart, make the second "row" 4" from the first and so on so that the spacing is 4" in all directions. Are you familiar with Square Foot Gardening? That is where I learned to do the wide rows as well as from Eliott Coleman. More condensed planting that way. Also, you can divide into sections instead of doing two rows of beets all the way across, go half way and make like a patchwork quilt. Makes it pretty too!

Here's a link to a quick spacing guide.

http://www.mysquarefootgarden....

I almost forgot! We picked our first ripe tomato today. Not very big one and a hybrid, Martin. New variety for us so I'm anxious to taste it!

I like to plant things in blocks rather than long rows - it makes it easier to water different plants different amounts.

P.S. When the weeds aren't intimately mixed with my plants, I would rather "weed" with a mattock. They don't come back as fast!

>> So I got out my shovel and double dug it. That really got deeper by doing it twice and loosened up the clods. Then I raked it and thumped out and leveled any remaining clods.

I'm struggling to keep some heavy-clay-soil beds loose enough while I build up the organic matter. Soimetimes I don't have time to double-dig the whole bed. Instead I do some spot-turning as deep as I can get without trenching.

I have a spade (trenching spade? sharpshooter spade?) that has a very long, narrow blade. It's great for going down twice as far as some shovel blades - and easily. Then I can LIIIIFT one slice that must go 18" deep. And then use the smae blade to twist or lever the surrounding soil down into the hole.

That acheives a lot of turning and keeping the deep parts aerated and draining, and mixing some compost down deep.

I find that a bed reverts to clay pudding if I don't keep adding compost - more compost than I can make, and usually more than I buy. Unfortunately, the bulk compost in my area is mostly wood products.

Thanks for the suggestions but it really is much easier to set up on rows rather than a grid. And I have it all measured and done now. I think that the rows actually work well here because it is all root veggies all in a row. Just need to plant seeds but the hard part for me was setting up where to plant them.

I have never done square foot gardening. Of course I have heard of square foot gardening but never done it.

Oh, there are no paths. No space between rows except for that allowed for plant spacing. That is why it took me an while to set up. The spacing needed to be just right,. It is all one patch of rows of veggies laid out. Access is from either side which is why I have to be able to reach 2 feet in from each side.

RickCorey said:>> So I got out my shovel and double dug it. That really got deeper by doing it twice and loosened up the clods. Then I raked it and thumped out and leveled any remaining clods.

I'm struggling to keep some heavy-clay-soil beds loose enough while I build up the organic matter. Soimetimes I don't have time to double-dig the whole bed. Instead I do some spot-turning as deep as I can get without trenching.

I have a spade (trenching spade? sharpshooter spade?) that has a very long, narrow blade. It's great for going down twice as far as some shovel blades - and easily. Then I can LIIIIFT one slice that must go 18" deep. And then use the smae blade to twist or lever the surrounding soil down into the hole.

That acheives a lot of turning and keeping the deep parts aerated and draining, and mixing some compost down deep.

I find that a bed reverts to clay pudding if I don't keep adding compost - more compost than I can make, and usually more than I buy. Unfortunately, the bulk compost in my area is mostly wood products.

Rick, I am lucky in that I have good soil. I just wanted to dig it because I wanted it loose for the root crops. It was only a small area. About 4 by 8 so not so bad digging it.

abhege said:I almost forgot! We picked our first ripe tomato today. Not very big one and a hybrid, Martin. New variety for us so I'm anxious to taste it!

Hurray for that first tomato of the season!

>> No space between rows except for that allowed for plant spacing.

That's what I think of as grid.