Harvest Preview

The garden is in drive mode right now. Some things are starting to slow down a bit, others are ripening / peaking, and others are just ramping up.

Believe it our not, our tomatoes are starting to peak. This is from Sunday alone:

North Texas gets too hot for them and the flowers usually start dropping just after the 4th of July due to excessive heat. By that time, we've gotten a nice harvest and started our fall tomatoes indoors (too hot outdoors).

My squash have slowed down due to squash bug, SVB, and cucumber beetle attack. But to be honest with you, I am ok with it. I have 16 spaghetti squash and 6 butternut squash maturing. So I just need the vines to stay alive along enough to ripen those. They have put on lots of color in the last few days; I guess the vines are putting their last bit of energy into ripening the fruit. I got 2 acorn squash and have another one ripening. I do wish I had more of these. The summer squash is making a comeback after I reburied their stems, but I've gotten 20 pounds from them already .... mostly zucchini.

I have two baby cantaloupe growing. I sure hope I get more. I have them wrapped in tulle which I remove twice per week for pollination purposes. I know this will decrease my yield, but at least they will stay alive long enough to give me a yield.

My okra is just getting started. Still coming in by the handful, but I'll see bowls of them soon enough.

I grabbed a handful of (southern) peas this week and more are on the way. Woooo Whooo!

The beans are gone. I yanked them. That last rain did them in. Not a leaf left on them. You can see the bush beans on the bottom right were severely affected as well and the bush beans on the bottom left were basically done giving their harvest anyway.

The eggplant are producing at least two per plant right now. I have at least 10 growing right now.

The peppers are small but georgeous. They are smaller than grocery store; maybe 3-5" long. But the plants are also short; still only about 18" tall. They will stop flowering soon. Unlike the tomatoes, we don't pull these when they stop flowering. They will stay nice and green (though flowerless) and keep growing through the hottest part of the summer. Then when temps start to die back down to the 90s, they start producing again. This 'second season' of production is usually better that the first because the plants are larger and more mature. I may try to overwinter a few this year.

Harvests over the next few weeks should be interesting. I just hope they keep cranking out through June and early July.

There are more gardeners sharing their experiences at the Tuesday Garden Party.