Early May Update 2017

The beginning of May is here, and we've had some fairly good weather this spring... a good amount of rain, and temperatures that have fluctuated between nice and cool, and pretty warm. It was in the upper 80s on Saturday and then upper 60s on Sunday.

Squash

Since we had some very mild weather this winter and early spring, I had gotten a very early start on squashes.   My Jumbo Pink Banana squash are doing very well.  The vines are huge and sprawling everywhere, and there are three squash on it. Two are probably full size already, and one is growing quickly.

I have them covered up in some netting to try and avoid anything from damaging the fruit.   The dreaded Squash Vine Borer moths are already out.  I have killed two, and have picked off a few eggs from the tips of the vines.  The bases of these plants are buried in leaf mulch, along with a lot of the major vines.  So I don't expect the SVB to start having a big impact on the plants until probably early June, when these three squash will hopefully already have been harvested.   The two big squash are huge, I suspect they are around 30lbs or more each.

My golden acorn squash plants are doing well too. They have started vining some now, and have lots of small squash on them.  I picked the first three yesterday.

And regarding my Spaghetti squash, one of my plants has 2 big fruit on it, and a smaller one.  The other plants is a runt, and doesnt really have anything on it.   

The plant with the squash hasn't really grown that much recently and has gotten hit by powdery mildew.  Its probably because its spent all its energy producing the fruit.  This one above is almost ready for picking.

Peas and Beans

My snap peas are not looking very good.  They got hit hard by powdery mildew, and I didnt try to stop it, so most of the plant is dying now, and the new pods are pretty small.  We've been able to pick enough for three good meals, but that's probably about it.  There are some volunteer pole beans  (from last year's bean vine) that grew next to them and they will probably take over the area soon

I started another area of pole beans by the area where the gourd trellis is.  Here are the plants, with the squash vines in front of them.  I planted a bunch of there beans, but unfortunately only about 5 of them are growing well.  

Tomatoes

Here are my cherry tomatoes.  We had major wind the past few days, which damaged some of these plants, so I had to create some reinforcement for them, as the vines have really grown long and tall.

There is a bunch of little green tomatoes on them.  Will have to keep my eyes open for the arrival of the tomato hornworms.  I'll have the BT ready for them.