Waiting for Tomatoes

New garden, side view.

Have you read 'Waiting for Godot'? It's a whacky story by Samuel Beckett, in which he writes about me and my kids, waiting for the tomatoes. Will they arrive? How sure can we be? They're there, alright. So is the blight. Every day I clip off a few more yellowed leaves... it's a race against sunshine. 

The kids and I will be leaving for a few weeks tomorrow, so the garden will be in dad's hands, and we'll likely miss the ripe tomatoes. He's promised to freeze some, hopefully that will work! This update is a little longer for that reason. 

The popcorn is looking promising with as many as 3 cobs on some stalks! I have never grown corn before, we shall see if the beetles or raccoons eat them before we get to them.

The purple beans have been decimated by the bunnies. A small handful every day is all I get.

The beans in the back are starting, but it's such a jungle I can barely see the green beans to harvest them. Next year I'm going purple all the way for pole beans!

 

All in all the new front garden is doing very well! You can see a large rhubarb in the foreground, that thing has grown gangbusters, it started out pretty meek and tiny! Giant sunflowers in the back, purple pole beans tall, and corn behind it even taller. Jungle of 5 tomato plants, that's all I did because I thought of it as a trial run.

 

I have a lot of squashes, which I have never grown before because the back plot is too wet for them. They are doing well, the cucumbers not as much. Maybe they get TOO much sun? Some of them look a little shriveled up.

 

In the empty pea bed, I seeded radish and lettuce, which is sprouting after just 2 days!

The hummingbird, butterfly and bee garden is thriving.  My middle child is, too :-) We had a goldfinch visit with the flowers today, too. Yellow!!!

Whacky volunteer squashes, probably not for human consumption, but I'll figure the chickens will like the seed?

This volunteer is inching over to the empty pea trellis, and below is a spot with fresh carrot seeds, planted where we harvested the potatoes already.

 The berries continue having a good year - I expanded my raspberry row a tiny bit, because I couldn't bear to throw away the suckers. There are signs of hope, some new healthy looking shoots in the blackberries, too. Hopefully I'll see more growth over the next few weeks, so that there will be fruiting canes for next season. No picture, but we're getting a small bowl of blueberries every 2 days or so, and more to come.

Stays enemy #1 though I think I see fewer of them now?

That's it for garden updates for a while, I bet I'll be amazed when I get home in a few weeks. We will see if will be shock or awe :-)