This is a great time to have a garden. It’s the time when everything you planted is starting to produce real things (not just zucchini). We picked one of the Jalapeño peppers and used it in the salsa we made this week. It was so good. The herbs are rocking. We picked 5 or 6 zucchini this week and wound up giving some away. Who eats that much zucchini every week? Not me. Some of the tomatoes are really bright red and I can hardly stop myself from picking them right now. The giant red bell pepper has some serious color now. Even the Armenian Cucumber plant has started to produce little cucumber-shaped melons. Really, the only thing that hasn’t produced is the Poblano pepper plant, but I haven’t given up on it yet.
I have had trouble with aphids in the past, but only when I was growing cold weather vegetables like Brussels sprouts. I remember yanking out all the plants and putting them in the trash because I couldn’t control those ugly gray aphids. I didn’t have a clue how to deal with them and I didn’t discover them until it was too late. Not this time.
This time I noticed one of the leaves of the zucchini plant had a ton of ants on it. Whenever I see a large group of ants, I wonder what’s going on… the ants are usually up to no good. I know ants herd aphids around like cattle, but I didn’t know aphids liked squash plants. To my surprise, when I turned the leaf over there were a bunch of little yellow dots being herded around by the ants. They were all very small, but when I looked closely I could tell they were aphids. Yellow aphids. That was new for me. So I smashed them all by putting one hand on the top of the leaf and then creating pressure with a finger on the under side of the leaf. The ants were not impressed. Neither was I. My fingers turned yellow from the aphid guts. But the problem was quickly and easily under control.
I routinely check the squash plants for signs of squash bugs. Now I know to also look for signs of aphids. I have seen a few more since finding the masses on that single leaf, so I just keep cleaning them up. I have been really lucky and haven’t had even one squash bug yet this year. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Speaking of zucchini. The single plant is cranking them out again. I’ve picked several this week and there are more that will need to be picked soon.
The peppers are really starting to look good. There’s even some color coming to the massive red bell pepper and some of the tomatoes. The poblano plant hasn’t produced any peppers yet, but it’s over 4 feet tall now. I had some tall pepper plants in Utah, but I don’t think I ever had one this tall. It’s pretty exciting, but I would definitely trade the height for some peppers.
There are a few eggplants growing now. That plant is really looking good. I think it’s the healthiest eggplant I have ever grown. I blame the drip system and the regular watering schedule. I’m definitely going to do a drip system ever year from now on. It’s just so easy and seems to really make a difference.
The herbs out front continue to grow like crazy. I trim them back each week, but we can’t use everything we harvest… and that’s a problem that will only get worse with time. I’m not complaining. Charmaine makes some of the most amazing purple pesto sauces with our purple basil.
We installed tomato cages this week, which turned out to be a good thing because it has been really windy. Still, some of these tomato plants are monsters that can’t be contained by these tiny cages. We should have installed the cages much sooner, of course, but it’s still good to have them now.
We have been back for more than a week now and everything is cruising along pretty well. I’m really enjoying the automatic watering from the drip system. It’s actually life-changing in a way. I don’t think I’ll ever do a garden without one again.
Of course, there are still some problem areas in the garden. The little roma tomato plants that came in a bundle of 6 or 8 have never done very well. They are the plants that had leaves dying from some disease (I think it may have been caused by thrips). They’re still looking very poor. But at least the rest of the tomato plants are growing like crazy. In fact I think we needed more tomato cages a week or two ago. It’s going to be tricky to get the plants into cages at this point, but it must be done.
The zucchini plant has leaves everywhere, but hasn’t been successful producing more zucchini after the three monsters we picked last week. It has both male and female flowers, but the new zucchinis seem to get aborted not long after they get going. I’m hoping it’s just a delayed response to allowing so many zucchinis to get so large last week and that things will return to normal this week. We’ll have to see.
The herbs in the front yard need to be trimmed again or they’ll go to seed again, and nobody wants that.
The jalapeño peppers are looking awesome, but I’m sort of sad to realize I only have one plant. For some reason I thought one of the other plants was also a jalapeño, but it looks like there’s only one jalapeño, one poblano, and three bell pepper plants. All the pepper plants are looking great, but I sure hope the poblano gives us a pepper soon. There have been plenty of blossoms, and the plant is quite tall, but so far we don’t have any fruit on that plant.
The Armenian Cucumbers vines are getting aggressive, and flowering like crazy, but there’s no fruit on the vines yet. The eggplant is behaving similarly. We’ve had a ton of beautiful purple flowers, but haven’t seen any fruit yet.
The artichoke plant continues to grow, but it’s clear from comparing it to the artichoke plants in the yards of my neighbors that we won’t be picking any artichokes this year. I think we may be on the two year plan for those. It’s certainly interesting to watch them progress.
As much as I enjoy not having to worry about watering the garden when I’m home, I was much more concerned about it getting water when I’m away. The big reason we installed the drip system when we did was because we knew we would be traveling to Mount Hood, Oregon for a little over a week. That’s enough time that nothing in the garden would have survived without water. But the drip system performed well and everything is looking great.
Zucchinis grow fast. We cut every zucchini from the plant before we left. There wasn’t even a hint of any that had started. We returned to find 3 monster zucchinis. Now to figure out how to use them.
The tomato plants have grown like crazy. I think there are several tomatoes on each plant. The peppers are also doing well. I think I counted 7 or 8 Jalapeños on a single bush. This is shaping up to be a great year for the garden.
The herbs in the front yard started blooming, so I had to cut the tarragon, basil, chives, and cilantro back down to size. I think the flavor changes once they go to seed, so it’s a good thing we caught them when we did.
