Mid-August Update

We just went through a few weeks of typical early August weather here in N. Texas, were we were at around 100 most days, and last Thursday we hit 104. But this past Saturday the weather started changing, and since then its been a lot cooler and more pleasant.  Since then we've been in the lower 80s, and its been lightly raining on and off, and surprisingly, the forecast calls for mid-80 for the next 10 days!  That's pretty rare here in August.  So I am expecting things in the garden to really start doing a lot better and producing more.  

Last post, I mentioned my Round Zucchini plants that I had under some netting. They have been growing huge under the netting, almost completely filling the area, and sprawling like vines.  There have been lots of male and female flowers but they have all withered and died before any have opened.  I think that was because of the heat.  I decided to remove the covering because the plants have gotten so big.  I hope that after a number of week of there being no place to lay eggs available that the SVB moths have left the area, but I know its still too early to think they are done for the year.  But I think the plants are so large and well established now that they should be able to survive some infestation for a while now, and hopefully produce well.  I am really hoping some of the flowers open and set fruit this coming week with the better weather.  There are 4 plants. They are sprawling and I can see many roots forming along the main vine and rooting down into the ground.   As I mentioned before, I am hoping to let at least 1 of the fruits grow to complete maturity, in order to use it as a fall decoration and ultimately for collecting seeds. These are the last of the seeds I had for this variety, and heirloom variety, so I would like to replenish my seed supply.

In the picture below you see them, with the okra plants behind them.  The okra are really doing well too. No flowers have bloomed yet, but the stems are getting real thick, and I think they will start producing soon too.  I have thinned them down to 4 strong plants.

Round zucchini plants, with Emerald Okra in the background

Pumpkins

Last post I mentioned some Jack-o-lantern pumpkin seedlings.  Here they are today.. so they are about 1 month old now. They have been kind-of struggling, but I am not sure why.  Maybe the heat.  Some of the lower leaves have mysteriously shriveled and died, and the plants looks wilted in the heat at times.  I suspect I might have over-watered them trying to compensate for the heat.  But today they are looking pretty good.  I see male flowers forming in them, and they seem to be starting to vine out. I'll keep them under these covers until they outgrow it.

Jack-o-lantern pumpkins after a month old

I was reading about commercial pumpkin varieties, and there is a good chance these might be seeds from hybrid varieties... so I might not get what I expect.  Will be interesting to see what this produces.  There are actually 6 plants there, but I'll need to thin them out to 4. (two are pretty small actually).

I also mentioned the Sugar Pie Pumpkins I was planted.  Those came up and have grown very well, and very quickly!  They are vining now, and just look a lot better than the ones above.  Here is what they look like, about 3.5 weeks old!

sugar pie pumpkin

There are about 10 plants there, and I should really thin them down to about 5 or so.  I hate doing that though when the plants all look healthy.
I'll plan on keeping the pumpkins covered as long as practical, especially if I see my Round Zucchini getting hit by SVB.  

I got some Pink Jumbo Banana Squash seeds from someone at GardenWeb forums, and she sent me a few seeds.  I soaked 4 seeds and they just sprouted, so I planted them in this area.  I know I will be cutting it real close because they are getting a pretty late start, especially for C. Maxima varieties, that take about 100-110 days to maturity.  Hopefully we don't have a freeze until very late November this year.

Jumbo Pink Banana Squash planted here.

Tomatoes and Peppers

My tomato plants are still alive for the most part.  They are still huge and sprawling. and look rather crispy from the heat, but still growing.  Below are both Rutgers tomato plants, and Super Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes.  Really hope the mild weather gets these producing again, otherwise they are a huge waste of space.  

Most of these are the Super Sweet 100 cherry tomato plants

some Rutgers tomato plants from the spring that survived the summer

For these Rutgers shown above,  I had bent over and dug most of the long vines into the ground, so many of the tomatoes should have some good root systems in place. I have not done a good job weeding the area, so they are getting overgrown by grass.

The sweet bell peppers are still coming along.  Its been pretty slow going, but the plants look pretty good today.  There are 5 good plants,and a tiny one that almost died but is showing signs of trying to come back.
I think my timing was good on planting these. These should starting producing a lot around late September when the weather cools down.

sweet bell pepper mixture

Beans

I pulled up all the remaining cucumber vines, and this area has been clean for about three weeks now. So I decided it was  good area to try and plant a fall planting of pole beans.  So I just planted some Kentucky Wonder beans there, and a number have just started coming up. The wire netting is to discourage varmints from eating the new seedlings.  Fall is usually a great time for pole beans here, the trick is timing it so they produce well during the cool months of Oct and early November before the freeze.  Some years I have waited too long to plant, and have had so see beautiful plants killed by the freeze just as they were starting to produce.

Mid Summer Update

Its almost the end of July, the hottest part of the summer.  Here is an update of what's going on in the garden.


Last year I had one of my dry birdhouse gourds break open at the end of the season, and some of the seeds scatted in the area.  This spring they sprouted, and since we've had a pretty wet spring and summer, they have grown well without any care.  I did start watering it a little a few weeks ago.  Here it is today, growing very nicely. 

Speaking of the gourds, the ones from last year are mostly completely dry now. I cut a hole into a couple yesterday, and will try to start using some of them for crafts. 


A few days ago we planted some jack-o-lantern pumpkins (saved seeds from a store-bought one someone gave me). Here is what they look like today, under their protective tulle tent.   Hopefully these will have good pumpkins by Halloween.  These don't stand a chance if it wasn't for the netting, unless I spent lots of time checking for SVB eggs, which is not fun.

jack-o-lantern pumpkin seedlings about a seek since seeds were soaked

Today I also just planted some sugar pie pumpkins in this other area of the yard. I pulled out a huge sunflower plant to make space.  There are some of the tomato plants that are still alive...  the pumpkin vines will grow around them if they still alive later this summer. 

just planted sugar pie pumpkins here

Below are the  sweet peppers that I mentioned starting from seeds in the last post.  About 7 seedlings came up, and I put them in the ground. One is dying, so there are 6 plants that are looking like they might make it.   They are pretty slow growing... as I remember from past experience, peppers start off slow. 

sweet peppers a few weeks old

 Here are the cucumbers.  They have been hit by SVB, as I have found some of the vines wilting, and have found grubs in them. But the main trunk doesn't seem to have been hit, so many portions of the vines are still alive and producing still.  Cucumber beetles have been bad, but have not caused a big problem yet.  Next to it are some of my basil bushes. These are regular volunteers in my garden. 

the cucumber are hanging on for life

And here is my tomato jungle.  The "sweet 100" cherry tomatoes have produced well lately, but seem to be taking a breather with the recent very hot weather. The Rutgers vines are also still alive, but have not produced anything in about a month. Its just been way too hot for them. The vines I had buried have certainly been helped, as I have seen fresh new growth, but no flowers or fruit though.

 From the previous post, I had mentioned I was planting some round zucchini, and that 1 seedling had come up.  Well that was the only one that came up.  I suspect my seeds are getting old. So I sprouted and planted 3 more seeds, which did come up (out of about 8 soaked seeds). So these plants are about 2 weeks behind the first one.  One of my goals with these plants is to let one squash grow to maturity so I can get seeds to replenish my supply. When these mature they are like small yellow pumpkins.

Round zucchini under protective netting

To report on my experiment using aluminium foil, I can say it didn't really "foil" the SVBs.  I've had lots and lots of the moths flying around trying to lay eggs, (the second generation this year that came from my spaghetti squash)  and I did find a few eggs on the leaves, despite the foil. So I think it did help a little bit, but not enough to prevent infestation.  I did pick off those eggs I found, and then covered the plant with tulle netting.  When the plant got bigger, and the newer seedling started outgrowing their smaller individual tulle nettings, I erected my bigger netting set-up shown above.  Flower are starting to appear on the big plant, but haven't opened yet.  I did see two female flowers forming. Hopefully we get a dip in the heat when those are open, and the fruit sets.  This week should be in the mid to upper 90s.



In my last previous post from July 3rd, I had shown my okra seedlings.  They have grown quite a bit since then, and are close to 2 feet tall now.    I thinned them down to 4 good plants (about 7 had come up).

Summer in North Texas

Summer is here, and in Texas, it mean extreme heat and dryness, which make it very hard to maintain a garden. Its been in the mid-to-upper 90s most days, and haven't had any good amount of rain in about 2 weeks (while we were on vacation).

Pretty much all the stuff I planted in the Spring is done with.  The onions, squash, garlic are all picked. The rutgers tomatoes are done producing too.  But the cherry tomatoes, being much more heat resistant, are still producing. The plants have gotten huge, and very long, so I have started burying many of the tomato vines so encourage more rooting, so that they might produce more later on.

cherry tomatoes can take the heat better

These cherry tomatoes have been great.  The ones that escape the mockingbirds, I often pick and eat them as a snack, as they have a very good flavor.  The rutgers tomatoes are all done producing, Unfortunately the mockingbirds ate a lot of them, in spite of that we  still got a pretty decent amount of tomatoes from the plants.
 I have layed down their long vines and dug trenches, and dug in the vines to encourage more root production.  Hopefully if the plants stay alive they produce more in the fall. ( may be foolish thing to do considering the water I'll have to spend to water them) but we'll see what happens.

buried tomato vines under a sunflower (being propped up by a stick)

 In late spring my son Andrew wanted to plant something so I helped him plant some cucumbers.  It was kinda late in the season but I thought was worth a try.  He seeded them in a large pot, and later he transplanted the plants once this space was available( where the snap peas has been growing).  His plants have grown pretty big now, and are producing. These are the "straight eight" variety. We have picked 3 nice ones, and a few more are growing. There are lots of cucumber beetles on them, and a few squash bugs too, but I have not wanted to spray anything on them.  Hopefully we can keep getting some more until they succumb to the heat and bugs.

cucumbers with some basil nearby.

 There are many volunteer basil plants and some milo plants around which I water occasionally.  I very much welcome the basil.  They have been coming up every year, and I just let them grow where-ever they pop up.

New Plantings

One of the reliable hot-summer plants is okra.  I seeded a few plants a couple weeks ago, and they came up.

Emerald okra from seeds saved from last year

I have the chicken wire over them for protection since we have a small dog that sometimes goes into the garden has tried to make holes.  This is to give them a little protection until they get a bit bigger.  I have 7 seedlings, but once bigger may thin down to 4 since that should provide more than enough for our needs.


 I also planted 4 "Round Zucchini" seeds last week, and 1 has come up.  Not sure what to expect since it will be growing maturing during both the hottest part of the summer where the pest are in full force too.  But my plan for these is to:
- While small, monitor every few days for SVB eggs, and keep area clear to prevent squash bugs.
- Put some aluminum foil around base and as mulch to see of this keeps SVB from laying eggs, (I've read about this but have not tried it.
- Once plants are bigger (maybe 2 weeks from now)  do a good inspection for eggs, then cover all the plants will tulle netting.  (not doing it now since I want them to get full sun so they grow fast and strong in their early life)
- Once female flowers appear, then hand pollinate, as long as aphids don't start being a problem and force me to remove the covers to deal with them.  Eventually just remove the covers.


The other thing I am hoping to grow during the summer is peppers.  Last week I bought a packet of sweet peppers:

I just planted 10 seeds in small pots a couple days ago.  Hoping they come up soon.  I thought about just direct seeding them, but thought it would be easier to keep the soil moist by planting them in pots, and putting them in the shade, until they germinated.

Onions

Growing Onions

This year was my first time seriously trying to grow onions.  I say "seriously" because in the past I have buried store-bought onions that were sprouting leaves into the ground, and have pulled them up  and split them later, and have then grown a few new bulbs from that. 

But this year I decided to give it a serious try.  As soon as they were available (around early February) I bought 2 bunches of onion plants from Home Depot. They were about pencil-wide small stalks.  I planted them immediately.    A few weeks later I noticed onion sets (miniature onions) at a local feed store, so I bought some of those too.   I bought a variety, including white, yellow, and purple onions.

They came up quick, and were pretty unaffected by any cold we had.   I planted two patches of them.

They got pretty big, and a few of the plants started to send up flower heads.  I cut those stalks off because that can sap the energy off of the production of the bulb.  But most just grew, and week by week I could see the width of the stalk growing, and a bulb starting to form.

These are almost ready to pick

When almost ready, the bulbs get bigger and seem to push themselves out of the ground.  So half of the bulb is above the ground.  And when ready to pick, the neck gets very soft and the greens just flop over.
I picked a few already but there are still a lot of them at various stages of development.  None of the purple ones have formed any good sized bulbs yet...not sure why, but the yellow ones seem to be doing the best.

Harvesting

First ones picked in late May

About 2/3rds of them have been picked already and are drying in the garage (June 8th)

Spaghetti Squash

Although I had mentioned my spaghetti squash in various posts before, I wanted to do a topical post this time describing my experience growing spaghetti squash in the spring.  I got the seeds from a store-bought squash from a year ago.  Last year I tried growing it in the fall but it didn't do to well because I didn't plan the garden very well, and it got too crowded, plus I was not able to protect the vines from squash vine borer as well as I normally am able,due to the crowded condition.  I got a few though, but this spring I wanted to give it a better effort.

Early Start!

I started my seeds around mid-February.   It was very early, but the winter this year seemed very mild at the time, and I thought I would start some seeds very early and see if I could keep them in pots until at earliest mid-March, and put them in the ground then. Our average last frost here is late March, and I thought I could just cover them whenever we had frost.  I started them indoors, and when we had nice sunny weather I would bring them outside, and back inside into our sun-room when it was cold at night.

in late February

I started two of these cup "pots" with two seeds each, which would become my two hills.   Around early March, I decided to risk it and just put them in the ground.  If they died due to a cold snap, I could just plant more, since I had plenty of seeds. So I made a large double-wide hill, which is basically a mound of dirt, and some compost from my chicken coop (I use the deep-litter method where I throw leaves and other compost in their coop, and then later after its composted use it in the garden).   After mixing the dirt from the garden, some of this compost, and some bagged "garden soil" I had a good rich soil for starting them.   Once planted in the garden, I did have some plastic tarp handy, and I did have to cover them a few nights when we had frost, but they survived.

Hail!

After a pretty mild March, the spaghetti squash were off to a great early start, and were actually just starting to lean over and start "running".  Then one night at the end of March, we had a pretty violent hail storm.  It left lots of small dents on our cars! Some of the hail was a bit bigger than quarter size!  It did a number on my 4 spaghetti squash plants.  One had the main vine broken off but fortunately right above the first node where there were side runners starting to form.  Two other ones had the main runners bent badly but not completely severed.   So I gently piled mulch and compost around the damaged vines, to help support them and encourage more rooting.  The leaves were all ripped up too.   I was worried they were not going to recover well so I sowed a couple more seeds in the hill nearby just in case.  The original vines recovered very well the following weeks, I think for most of them the secondary runners took over as the main vines, and some just healed up.  The extra seeds I planted came up too, but I think were overwhelmed by the original plants.

A few weeks after the hail the vines had recovered very well

In order to both protect the main vines from future squash vine borer egg laying, plus to encourage rooting along the leaf nodes of the vines, I also began to cover up the main vines with dirt and compost, or just leaf mulch, whichever was a hand.  Every few days as the vines kept growing, I kept covering them up.  This also helps develop very large root systems at different point along the vine.

Early Flowers

Around mid-April. I was very surprised to see a female flower forming already on one of my vines.  I was a little worried because I could see a bunch of female flowers developing but very few males.  This is opposite of what I am used to! Usually the plants produce bunches of male flowers first.

female flower view from top

 The female flowers have a small squash below the blossom.  I did find a male flower that had opened just in time, and was able to hand-pollinate the first female blossoms.  Below is a female blossom the day after its been pollinated.  The small squash will begin to swell, and a day or two later, the dried up flower falls off.

Pollinated flower

Maturing Squash

In the past, I've had damage to my squash either from bugs or maybe rats or some other pest, so I have made it a practice to cover my maturing squash and pumpkins with some netting to help protect them from getting chewed on.  I have about 8 squash forming now, at different sizes and stages.  The female blossoms that come since these had shrived up and died,  probably because the plant cannot support too many.  The plant stopped producing female blossoms for about a week and a half, but just the past couple days more started appearing again.

Three medium size squash maturing.

This is the first one to develop, and its also the biggest one I have so far. Its almost ready.

I'm hoping as these first fruits start maturing the plant will then think it can produce a second batch.  I've been very pleased so far though with what I have.

Pests

Since I got a very early start, the vines have not gotten attacked by anything yet!  This is certainly the best way to beat Squash Vine Borers (SVB) if you can start them very early.  The typical pests I have to deal with are the SVBs, squash bugs, and cucumber beetles.  Have not seen any squash bugs yet.  Have seen  one or two cucumber beetles so far.  Unfortunately I've seen that  the SVBs have also gotten an earlier start than usual.  I've actually seen a few moths already (first one was end of April).  I think this is due to the very mild winter.   I've picked off a few eggs off of the tips of a couple vines, but their heavy egg-laying has not begun yet, since I have only seen and picked off about 6 or so eggs the past couple of weeks.   With my vine covering efforts ongoing, its not a big concern yet.  I typically start injecting BT into the leaf stems and exposed vine areas as a preventative when I start seeing damage, but I have not started that yet.

Harvesting it

I decided to start picking some of the ones that seemed ready.  From reading about it, most recommended  a hard skin ( resistant to fingernail  puncture)  and a yellow or buff coloring.  They also recommended the stem starting to brown, but I decided not to wait that long since the vine is still growing a lot, and I have also picked pumpkins and other squash with green stems before and they finish riping quite fine anyway.  I also want to encourage the vine to keep producing, so maybe removing the fully grown ones might help.  So I picked the first two.  Their skin was definitely hard, and the coloring was right, plus they have stopped growing for a while now. These are around 5.5lbs each.

First spaghetti squash of 2016, picked May 11th

As of June 8th, picked 11 so far (we ate two of the smaller ones already).
There are about 4 other on the vine at various stages of development. The vines are getting hit by SVB, and much of the original base of the plant is dead or dying, but the vine tip and runners are about 20ft from the base, still growing and looking good. I've been occasionally covering up exposed vines with dirt, and checking for SVB eggs occasionally but I'm not too worried since I've gotten such a good harvest so far. The acorn squash have not done bad either. Those are Table Queen acorn squash.

Postmortem July 3rd

Just today I picked up my last spaghetti squash, which bring the total to 17, of which 6 have already been eaten. They have been of various sizes, some very nice size, and some smaller.  Been extremely please with this harvest.  The one I picked today was on the last remaining vine, which has long since separated from the main base, but has been growing through roots along the vine.  The rest of the vine I have pulled out, and have seen much evidence of SVB, but also of Squash bugs, which I think are also a major reason the rest of the vine died off so much.  I have squashed lots of squash bugs and found many eggs on part of the vine that I have pulled off. Aphids were never much of a problem, but there was some powdery mildew, especially since we had such a wet spring.  

So I think the key for success for this was:

- Started early to beat the pests to the punch.  

- Covered vines with dirt as they grew.

I never really spent much time ever picking off eggs, or never sprayed anything for the pests, or tried to do much else.  

Late April Update

Wanted to give a quick update of my garden:

Volunteer Flowers

This year I had 3 poppies come up.  I had spread some seeds a couple years ago, but some seeds must have been dormant and woke this late winter as I didn't remember any last year. I looked these up on Google and saw they are called "Peony Poppies".  They are also called Opium poppies!  These are very beautiful flowers. I intend to save a bunch of seeds again from these.

volunteer peony poppies

 A few years ago we grew some German Chamomile, and the cool thing is that every year since they have always reseeded themselves. Here are some from this year.  These are so pretty,and smell so wonderful.  We had some fresh chamomile tea last night from some of these.  When they first come up they are tiny plants, but have very distinctive foliage, so I recognize them, and weed around them. This year they grew mainly around my lettuce and spinach.

German Chamomile

Squash

My spaghetti squash is doing very well!  But what is really surprising is the amount of female flowers that have shown up first!  Usually with squash, the male flowers come up first, and then later the female flowers come. But this time I've had tons of female flowers, and just a few male flower.  But there are about at least 4 squash now that are pollinated and have set fruit, and more on the way.  

lots of female flowers on my spaghetti squash

female blossom

My acorn squash has not done as well.  I have three hills planted, but two hills are on a low area of the yard, that collects a lot of water during rains.  I think these got drowned out with the last heavy rains, because the next day after the rains, many of the leaves were wilted on many of the plants.

Most of this acorn squash is showing signs of drowning due to poor drainage in this part of the yard.

 The other hill is on a raised bed, so is doing much better.  Here is the plant, with a female blossom open. Like the spaghetti squash, surprisingly there are female flowers first. I am thinking this is because of the time of year and cool temperatures they experienced earlier on.

Regarding the SVBs (squash vine borers) I actually saw one resting on my pea plants, and killed the moth. But I have not seen any eggs laid yet. (I have been checking since I saw the moth last week).

Other Veggies

Here are my snap peas.  They have gotten very tall, and are producing well, but as expected, are beginning to get hit by spider mites, and also powdery mildew, due to the rain and wet weather.  Every time I plant these they get afflicted once the plants start producing pods. Must be that the plants get weaker focusing their energy on producing the pods. Also we are mostly in the lower 80s now... getting a bit warm for these plants.   I wish I would have planted more. They are so tasty, I always wish we had more. Next time I will hopefully plant 3x more plants.

sugar snap peas

 My tomatoes are doing pretty well, but don't look quite as healthy. I notice some of the leaves have a few spider mites.  I do have lots of ladybugs around, so I hope that they start attacking the spidermites too. There are a few tiny tomatoes forming on them now.  To their left are the sweet-pea flowering peas.  They should start blooming soon.  I really like them as cut flowers since they have a wonderful fragrance.

sweet peas (left) and tomatoes (right) in the back, behind the spaghetti squash

The onions are almost ready.  Some of the bulbs are about golf-ball size now

Broccoli still growing. But getting hit by aphids.  Some small flower heads have formed.

Early April 2016

Hello again!
Being early April, wanted to give an update of my garden.  It was a pretty mild winter as I said in my previous post.  Since my last post back in the end of February, we've only had a couple days that were barely below freezing.  I took a risk and planted some of my warm weather plants into the ground real early (the tomato and squash seedlings I had shown before that I was growing in pots). I'm glad I did because that let them get a great head-start.    I've only had to cover them twice, due to the threat of frost, but that's all behind us now.
There was one set-back back in the end of March.  We had a big hailstorm!  Some of the hailstones were quarter-size, and they really tore up my onions, spinach, and my spaghetti squash, and busted a few heads of cabbage. The other stuff was not hurt much fortunately.  Since then the weather has been very nice, lots of sun, and rain occasionally.

One thing I noticed this year is that as the aphids showed up, many of the beneficial insects I had towards the year of the season last year have been showing up in good numbers too!  I've seen lots of ladybugs and ladybug larva around, plus some hoverflies, and lacewings too. Its nice they have shown up early because last year it was a struggle with the aphids!

Below is a picture of the broccoli patch.  Last post they were just a couple inches tall, but now they are getting pretty big.  Still no flower heads forming, though.  Also the cilantro next to it has bolted already.  Right next to them are three "Popaver" poppies.  These came up by themselves (I had spread some seed early last year, but none came up then!). They are about the bloom.

Here are the onions I planted this winter.  I didn't mention them in my previous post, but they have been steadily growing since late January.  There are some garlic in there too, elephant garlic, from cloves I had saved last year.  These I also planted back in the early winter.   And some more broccoli plants mixed in among them.

Below is the spaghetti squash.  And behind them are the tomato plants.

 There are actually 4 plants, 2 per hill.   They got clobbered by the hail, and two of them, their stems broke or bent badly, but fortunately above the leaf nodes, so that the plants were able to develop the runners below as their main shoots. So these have fully recovered and have started growing very quickly now.   The tomatoes are the "rutgers" variety.  They have recently started growing pretty fast, and in fact, one already has a couple of blossoms!  I'm sure glad I've gotten such an early start on these.  With the tomatoes, its important to be able to get a good harvest before the heat hits in full force.  And for the spaghetti squash, to get a  good head start on the Squash Vine Borers, which usually show up late May.

Below is the acorn squash I mentioned last post too, the Table Queen variety.  I have 3 hills of these, and they are not quite as far along as the spaghetti squash but they are starting to grow pretty fast now.

My first spinach patch, which I started late fall last year, has bolted already, and I've let it go to flower, for seed-collecting. Since spinach seed have a short shelf-life, I like saving seeds for the fall or next spring.
Below is the second patch I started in February.  They took a hit from the hail but have recovered pretty well, and are ready for picking.

Right above the spinach above are the Sweet Peas.  They have been growing slower than the snap peas,but are doing well though.  I don't see any flowers forming yet, but I'm expecting some great flowers around early May, and will post pictures.  I applied some "Bayer Systemic Rose" fertilizer and insecticide/miticide to them, because since they are not for eating, and they get hit by spider mites often, I'm hoping that will let them last further into the year.
Below are the snap peas. They are in full bloom, and there are bunches of small pods beginning to form.  I need to provide some more support as they keep growing because they have surpassed their tomato cages.

The yellow flowers at the bottom are the turnips which have all bolted. We did get some very nice turnips, and enjoyed some greens too, but I've pulled out most of them except for a few plants I've kept for collecting seeds.

Below is another section of onions, and the third small spinach patch next to it.  And on the right is the catnip plant which survived the winter, and is growing very nicely now.  I've also noticed some new catnip plants around it too.

Here is the remaining Cabbage. It did very well,and we've eaten lots of cabbage. Most of what you see is the remaining plants, what has grown after the head has been picked. I'm planning to use these like collards, if they don't form small heads, or don't bolt. Some of the cabbage has bolted, and I've had to pick it and feed it to the chickens.

Will post again soon!  Happy Gardening!