Early summer havests - June 18th

 Been a couple of weeks since I posted, and wanted to give an update on how my summer veggies are doing.  Its been quite warm and humid (low 90's), but unfortunately not a whole lot of rain.  But for Texas standards, it hasn't been that bad yet.   Should start getting into the 100s by early July, but none on the forecast yet.  

Try telling these chickens it isn't that hot yet!

My garden continues to grow and the plants are at various stages of production.   

Cucumbers

My cukes plants have been bearing real nicely the past week. I've picked about 10 from them so far, and more are along the way. 

some cucumbers (dual-purpose slicing/pickling) along with a ball zucchini.

The vines are still infested with spider mites, and unfortunately there has been an explosion of cucumber beetles around.  But the plants are still producing despite them.  The cucumber beetles seem to focus on eating the blossoms.   I try and kill them by hand whenever I can catch them, but there are so many.  I am really trying to avoid spraying any chemicals.  Last year they got so bad I had to spray some sevin to knock their numbers down.  I do have some beneficials around (lady beetles, assassin bugs, lacewings, etc) so that's one of the major reason I an hoping not to have to spray.  Unfortunately it seems these cucumber beetles have few natural predators.  My chickens don't like to eat them at all. I try offering them, they peck once at them and move on. Must have some nasty taste to them (hence the bright colors?). 

Squash/Pumpkins

The two older ball zucchini plants I have are still doing very well. The plants are still looking very healthy.  I have injected the main vines with BT to ward off SVB, and its worked well.  We've picked a good 7 squash from these plants, despite the problems with rats eating the female blossoms.  I've set out traps, and so far have killed 4 young rats.  I set the traps right by the plant, at night, so I am sure they are the culprits.   We were out of town for a few days, and one of the ball zucchini got huge, so I am letting it grow, and see if it becomes a pumpkin, or something like it.  Right now, its huge, and sure looks like an immature pumpkin. 

huge ball zucchini, which I plan to let ripen into a pumpkin

Because I let this one get so big, two other fruits on this plant have gotten aborted.  So I guess I am making a sacrifice here letting this one grow.  I am just curious to see what this will look like or how big it gets. Right now its about 10inch in diameter.

The newer three plants are still under tulle netting.  The plants are real big, and have male flowers but no female yet.  I am hoping I can get some fruit from them, but concerned about the triple digit heat that is coming, and how it will impact their fruit set.

The jack-o-lantern pumpkin plant now has one pumpkin that is growing on it.  Its about softball sized now.  It has aborted a number of other ones.  The plant is looking fairly healthy too.  No signs of SVB damage yet.

Tomatoes

My heirloom tomatoes are starting to ripen now.  Unfortunately something has found out they are good to eat.  I had two very nice large tomatoes, one of then bright yellow, that got half-eaten.  So I decided to start picking some of them and letting them ripen inside the house.  I also covered a few with some netting to let them vine ripen.  I am suspecting either birds, or maybe even the rats.   One of my tomatoes (not pictured) is bright orange.  And the are of various shapes/sizes.  The plants are getting huge, and they are getting harder and harder to keep staked.  But unfortunately I don't see any new tomatoes forming.  Maybe its just too hot now for them.

Garlic/Onion

In a previous posting, I had mentioned how I planted  some garlic cloves late last fall, and some onions in the winter.  Well the tops of them are dying off, and I decided it was probably time to pull them out.    So I pulled out all 4 of the elephant garlic plants.  They had some real nice cloves forming on them.  I set them out to dry.  I plan on keeping some of these in the fridge to plant again this fall for next year.  And we'll eat the rest.

Elephant Garlic right after being pulled up

My onion plants looked like they are done too, so I pulled out half of them (about 6 plants).
4 of them had nice sized onions, and the other two had not formed well.  I still have about 4 remaining plants I need to pull out.  I've never grown onions before, so this was pretty neat.

Onions

Sweet Corn

As I mentioned before the first planting of corn was a disappointment.  They actually did produce ears, but the ears were tiny.  We did eat some of them today, but it took about 2-3 ears per person. But  it was still fun.   I did plant a second planting, and those seem to be doing pretty well.  Here is a picture of them (next to the tulle-covered ball zucchini)

Check back next few week for updates on the Okra.  They are still pretty small but growing.  The pole bean plants are still alive but look real sickly.  The spider mites are pretty bad, and they have produce just a handful of bean pods.  I might pull it all out in a couple of weeks and try again in the fall.