Summer Lovin' Part 1

By lovin', I mean that I'm loving this garden. What on Earth were you thinking?

It's been a few weeks since the last post. Since this blog exists in large part so my parents can see the latest happenings in our home ownership saga, I felt no rush to update it while they were in town. Once they left, my job ate me. Plus, it was a matter of having time to either blog about the garden or actually work in the garden, so... you get the picture. Trying to catch up now.

The peas from my last post have come and gone. They were fresh and lovely, although not quite as productive as we had hoped. They produced one sizable crop over about a three-week span and that was it. Whether that was due to the aphid infestation they acutely developed or to something else I am unsure. Although I suppose that may have just been the type of peas that we planted. They were absolutely delicious, though. There is nothing quite like fresh raw peas eaten moments after picking. I've also never had cooked peas that were quite so fresh before - the taste was simply spectacular. Sweet and amazing. I even ate the empty pea pods after shelling, because they were just that good. That is why I love pea puree in fancy restaurants. Pea shoots, too. I planted extra seeds this spring in case some didn't grow, and I ate all of the extra shoots. So good!

The tomato plants are all six to eight feet tall now; we actually had to top some of them this weekend as they were poking out through the top of the cage. The Beam's Yellow Pear, Eva Ball, and Heritage Hybrid tomatoes are all growing nicely in their squirrel-free enclosure, and I replaced the bait in the stinkbug traps to hopefully keep those hungry little buggers away as well.

The zucchini and acorn squash plants are literally taking over the back third half of the garden. It's a squash jungle out there! The walkway between the squash bed and the tomato bed has been completely overrun - I have to be careful when I'm out there not to step on the zucchini plants.

In an attempt to ward off a repeat of last year's horrific squash borer infestation, I have been very proactive. I have wrapped the bases of most of the squash stems in tinfoil to keep those wretched moths from being able to target the stems for egg-laying. I refer to it as the tinfoil hats for squash, and this song was playing in my head the entire time I was wrapping the stems. I've also buried the stems in additional locations as they grow across the ground, to encourage tap root formation. That way, even if part of a plant gets wrecked, with luck the rest of it will survive. Lastly, today I put out a card of Trichogramma minutium eggs. This is a parasitic wasp that will hatch, mature in a few days, and then lay its own eggs inside the eggs of any squash borer moths that might be in the garden. Squash are serious business in this house and I am not having a repeat of last summer, when I only had one zucchini all year. So far it seems to be working - there are several acorn squash and zucchini maturing, and today we harvested the first zucchini! I made baked zucchini chips with parmesan - delicious.

More updates to come as regards the cucumber plants, potatoes, and the various greens (I <3 kale), plus photographs of a few projects my terrific father helped with while he was here. Look for those this weekend!