Friday, July 25, 2014

Wild!

There are tomatoes everywhere!  I'm going to have hundreds!  I don't know hundreds of people to give them to, so the dozens I do know are going to get scads!  Holy guacamole!  And holy salsa!  And holy tomato sauce!

In some areas they're cropping up 6-10 on a single stem, like grapes.  I don't remember buying grape or cherry tomatoes, but this whole process has been a big bucket of surprises and things I didn't know I planted, so perhaps I'm looking at cherry tomatoes.

There are pear-shaped tomatoes, and they could be San Marzanos, which would be awesome.

These big, beefy tomatoes just look so delicious, I don't know if I can wait until they ripen.

OMG, BLTs!

So many little guys.  There are going to be a lot of salads in my future again.

Peek-a-boo!  Cauliflowers are coming up!

Imma eat the hell outta you guys, with cheese!

ONIONS!  They're coming right out of the ground!  I understand I am supposed to leave them in until the greens start to wither and go brown, and they are still strong and green so the onions will continue to bake in the dirt for a while longer.

Yellow onions are a couple weeks behind the red ones, which makes sense because I planted them a couple weeks behind too.  I guess they don't play catch-up.

BAM!  So many red onions, it's amazing.

My bro has dubbed this a "pumpermelon", because what I planted in this space was watermelon, pumpkins, cukes, and what I thought were cantaloupe but turned out to be yellow squash.  They are definitely not cukes or yellow squash, so they must either be watermelon or pumpkins.

And they're crawling out of the beds and growing across my lawn.  So eager to spread!

Yesterday I woke up and found that the tomatoes had grown so much that they uprooted the tomato cages and pulled them over.  I had to pound some stakes into the ground to help prop up the cages, with the hopes that they'd keep the tomatoes upright.  Makes no sense because these were all supposed to be determinate tomatoes, limited in growth.  They lied.


Here's a stake holding up the cages, with millions of tomatoes coming out.  Was it a mistake to fertilize these guys a couple weeks ago?

This is two tomato plants, weighed down heavily with tomatoes.  The cages should've been quadruple the size and maybe then they may have been able to contain these plants, but the ones I have didn't stand a chance.

From behind, with multiple stakes propping them up, they're still heavily leaning and wanting to take the cages out again.  I feel them.  I know their struggle to grow and thrive and bloom with all their heart.  I get it.  I don't want to hold them back, but they'll break and rot if I don't.

What a crazy adventure!


Monday, July 7, 2014

Surprise!

Let there be cucumbers!  This is a tiny one, actually, about an inch and a half long.

Look how tiny they start out!  And what's with the weird, pokey spikes?  So odd.

My cantaloupe turned out to be yellow squash.  Interesting.  I'll take it!

There are many more yellow squash to come!

And even more!

The baby peas are just so darned cute!

I need nitrogen, though.  The leaves are yellowing from the bottom up.  Poor things.

The tops of my lettuce are neat, which are probably 3 feet tall, lying on their sides, though.

The spread.

The sunflowers are catching up in height to the tomatoes.  Good job, guys!

And I had to buy trellises for the cukes, which is when I also discovered there are pumpkins in the yellow-squash-that-used-to-be-cantaloupe bed.  This is the ultimate surprise bed, I guess.  What fun!

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Butterflies, Tomatoes and Beasts

These little white butterflies have been all over my broccoli lately.  I planted wildflowers that were supposed to attract butterflies, but they completely ignore the wildflowers and spend all their time on the broccoli.  It's interesting.  I never thought of broccoli as something to draw in the butterflies.

So cute.  Okay, so this one is on the wildflowers, but it was only briefly and it went back to the broccoli.

It's a miracle!  There are baby tomatoes!  They are everywhere!

But the real beast in the garden was this obscene zucchini.

For scale, take a look at that monster. 

And I ate it!  With another zucchini, baked with tomatoes and cheese.  This is my new favorite dish.  The other thing is a pork cube steak with green tomato slices and red onions.  It was okay.  The zucchini was to die for!