The salad I've been waiting for

This weekend finally feels like summer! Since I turned my dissertation in Thursday, I've relaxed, went tubing and to the Tap Room in San Marcos on Friday, went hiking this morning at the green belt followed by a cherry lime slushie, and tomorrow am going to a barbeque! Yummy, relaxing weekend to make me feel human again. And to top it off, we just had our first summer salad 100% grown in our backyard.

It's Armenian and bush slicer cucumbers, cherry tomato, early girl tomato, white bermuda onion, and a little basil, salted and left to sit for about 15 minutes to get the juices going. Yum! I love the bush slicer cucumber. I was amazed at how sweet the early girl tomato was and how mild the onion was raw. Hopefully this is first of a lot of salads to come, although I am concerned with as hot as it's been the tomatoes may stop setting fruit.

From left to right: sweet potatoes, leeks, strawberries. The sweet potatoes keep growing, I am hoping the leeks will be ready soon, and the strawberries keep putting out a few berries.

We are getting our first green beans! A little later than we hoped, since we had to replant after something ate all the seedlings.

Our first summer squash! Right now it's about 2 1/2 inches in diameter, a flying saucer squash. It can get up to 4" but I plan on eating it by the end of the week.

Nice view of the flying saucer and bush slicer plants.

Baby bush slicer cucumbers.

A violet jasper tomato ripening. This is the second one that's ripened. It was the size of a large cherry tomato but tasted more like a regular tomato to me.

View of our tomatoes. They seem pretty happy right now.

The okra seedlings are growing slowly.

Harvest as of last post (3 weeks ago):
7 heads of garlic
2 carrots
1 cup snow peas (it's been too hot, they are petering out and we are letting the last stay on for seed)
15 cherry tomatoes (small fry and sweet million)
1 each- roma, early girl, and violet jasper tomatoes
1/4 cup strawberries
3/4 lb white bermuda onions (they did not grow as large as expected, but are very tasty)
1 bush slicer cucumber
1 (small) Armenian cucumber

The cherry tomatoes have arrived!

It has been about a month since the last garden update. Sadly, we still haven't had any rain (at least not enough to count in the rain gauge). It's been what, 2 1/2 months now and it's supposed to be the rainy season! We have mulched the garden heavily now, but it has also been unseasonable hot, 90s most days, so we are still having to water 2-3 times/week. Our garden has had some exciting developments:

This week we started getting ripe cherry tomatoes, 3 so far but at least 10 more in the process of ripening.

Our tomato plants are various degrees of happy. Some of the thinner transplants were killed by something that cut them at the base, so we added a few more transplants late and they are obviously smaller than the older tomatoes. I also accidentally decapitated a roma plant so it is now in the process of growing a new main stem...I also think the east row of tomatoes is getting more sun and are taller than the west row.

The jalepeno has flowered, several times actually but so far none of the blooms have survived to fruit. They keep falling off, but I think they are getting pollinated.

Because of the super hot weather, the lettuce was finished, so we replaced it with sweet potato slips about 2 weeks ago. They have already put on several leaves, and apparently the greens can also be yummy to eat. They are supposed to take 110 days (Vardaman bush variety), so we will see how they turn out in mid-August! If you look closely, behind the slips there is a row of leeks and garlic, and then the strawberries and snow peas. The strawberry plants have grown more, but not fruited much. We also planted some Clemson spineless okra, which is growing well so far (not shown).

If you look really closely you can see the start of our first cucumber! It is an Armenian cucumber.

 

 Our potted cucumber and some of our squash have also really taken off! No fruit yet, but I see some female flowers getting ready to bloom!

We repotted our herbs into a single large pot (except for the oregano, it would take over). Even though they have less space, I think they are happier because the smaller pots dried out quickly. Back-basil, center-rosemary, front-parsley and dill.

An overview of the garden. The HUGE plants in the right bed are potatoes. 

Garden harvest for the last month:

10 cups romaine and mesclum (unfortunately some of it bolted and bitter)

5 cups swiss chard (and a little spinach, also bolted now)

8 small carrots (totalling maybe 6 ounces...)

5 cups sugar snap peas

3 cherry tomatoes

1/4 cup green onions

1/2 cup herbs

3 heads of garlic

5 strawberries? few and far between...

 This month has been more of a transition from spring to summer vegetables, so not very much harvested. Hopefully more to come soon!