Well, our snow peas and sugar snaps were going strong until some critter decimated them. Got at half of my yellow wax beans, too, until my husband put up a taller perimeter defense. Our zuchs are coming on but not like an army. Tonight I made a little marinated salad with our first cuke and halved cherry tomatoes. Sautéed some of our zuchs with store bought (gasp) red bell pepper and some onion. All went well with Panko crusted Parmesan pork cutlets.

Wishing you and the Princess well.

seagrass

I don't do vegetables, but two months ago (I think) I put 3 cherry tomato seeds in a planter to show a little city girl that tomatoes don't materialize out of nowhere on supermarket shelves.

2 of the 3 sprouted and are thriving on benign neglect. The leaves look dreadful due to leaf miners and probably other pests, but there's lots of tomatoes - they look just fine - and a couple day ago they started going red.

Harvest season will begin tomorrow.

So far, doing ok. The toms have a blight so we are spraying the plants and it looks to be working. I have had six, 4 San Marzano and 2 Mortgage Lifters, plus tons of the cherry, Chocolate Sprinkle. Banana peppers are going strong, but the jalapenos are very slow this year, crookneck has given me 5 so far, but the zukes went in very late so nothing there. Kohlrabi is done and eaten, chard in its place and should be ready to pick next week. Collards look ready to pick also and the brussel sprouts are going slow and steady in the heat. Red cabbage is doing well in the raised flower bed. Dad's cucumbers are going like crazy, we are running our of victims, I mean neighbors to hand them too. Even the garbage men get some as does the landscaper. Last Sunday he brought me 15....I told him to leave with them!

Now if you are talking flowers, my roses have never looked better.

When and where in SC are you going?

Seagrass, the mice are eating the peas here, they leave the pods and just eat the small peas. Grrrr. A groundhog pretty much decimated the tomatillos and a bunny keeps topping off the collards, in spite of the "Liquid Fence" spray.

Wintercat, your city kid will probably be amazed at those tomatoes, I think it's good to know that one tiny seed can produce such a bounty, it still amazes ME!

Peppi, I'm glad your red cabbage is doing well, as the tomatillo eating groundhog also ate just the center out of each of the red cabbage plants. So I have huge leaves but no heads. Elery says he thinks I'll have to fence off a small spot if I'm ever going to grow cabbage. No cucumbers yet either, it'll be a couple of days, when I'm gone.

I'm going to Myrtle Beach with The Princess, for that competition. We'll leave tomorrow morning with the camper, her brother and her parents. Elery is staying here with the farm and the dogs, as he's having knee replacement on August 29 and could not possibly ride that far. We're coming back next week, I think Wednesday.

Yeah, I know. Myrtle Beach in July. Not February or March, July. Go figure.

Annie

I am so jealous that you are going to MB. Love the place. Are you staying in the campground right on the ocean, near the pier? Head for the beach, the winds will keep you cooler. Play goofy golf in the evening. Watch the fireworks from the beach too. Oh, heck, I want to go too!

I harvested quite a few peppers this morning to relieve some of the stress on them in the heat and have been putting up shade cloth. This pic is the first round of picking this morning. The Aleppo will be the first ones in the dehydrator today, the Sinahuisa are destined for hot sauce and the Fresno (not yet picked,) will be fermented. The aji amarillo are being sent to an online foodie friend- there are sooooo many more to pick! Not sure what to do with the rainforest and hinklehatz yet, the Palmyra and corbaci are wonderful for fresh eating and I'm seeing lots of salads in my near future! Not sure what I'll do with the pretty little yellow scotch bonnet- first ripe one of the season!

Tomatoes, Jalapenos, Black Eyed Peas, Okra, Pumpkins, Watermelon, Walking Onions are all growing well. Harvest is ongoing for tomatoes, jalapenos and walking onions. Figs are ripening daily! Papaya plants are up. Citrus is done for this year, but all have green fruit which will ripen early 2017. Persimmon and Pomegranates are full and will be ready in October.

I'll be starting fall crop seeds end of August for planting in October.

I have been harvesting pear tomatoes, cucumbers, poblano chiles and jalapenos. And one bell pepper.

I will be picking lots of tomatoes soon. I have heirloom beefsteak tomatoes and an unknown volunteer heirloom from last year and a black krim.

I also have a huge volunteer butternut squash...enough so I will be able to share with the food bank here.

My dill is ready so pickles will be made, too.

I have an enormous volunteer heirloom parsley plant, too.

Bananas, okra, sweet potatoes, winter squash & perennial Egyptian, Welsh onions coming along...

Tomatoes are just beginning to bloom, peppers are spindly, but the blueberries are on and weighing down the branches. Strawberries, raspberries and tayberries are going crazy. We just picked the last of the pie cherries. We should have huckleberries, but the deer ate the bushes this spring, which they have never done before. They also ate the rhubarb.

I planted a much smaller garden with just the basics, no new varieties or experiments (except a few Korean pepper plants for kimchi). Everything grew so well last year, I'm ahead on canned stuff. I planted a couple of weeks late because we had a little heat wave, so everything is behind. The only vegies so far have been chard, kale and beet thinnings. Our spring greens have been the volunteers that came up with the first round of cover crop and now there's a nice patch of mustard, tatsoi and orach going to seed, and few tomatillo and tomato seeds and even some acorn squash....easy winter. And the garlic is starting to die back. I was worried they wouldn't come up after they got baked in the ground last summer, but they look good.

DH has been playing Hurry Up and Wait with the VA and hasn't been able to lift anything for the last month, so I'm really glad I scaled back.

It is blueberry season - I have picked about 7 pounds of the tiny wild blueberries at my dad's. My high bush plants will produce a few cups - they are 1-3 years old. I picked my first Sungolds - and a few others tomatoes are changing color. I have peppers but they aren't quite ripe yet. Peas, beets, broccoli, lettuces, radishes and other greens I have been harvesting for awhile. No beans yet.

Wildlife is making itself known. A deer got into my garden last night - nibbled the broccoli and peas and gorged on beet greens. I salvaged the beets and a few greens. And tonight I came home to two adorable baby raccoons on my porch eating cat food. They weren't afraid - I sprayed them with water - they cried and ran away.

We think it's a deer (maybe a giraffe) that pulled out all of our pea plants and more than half of our yellow wax beans. DH put up some very high staunch fencing around the raised beds. I want to get some cameras for amusement next year.

I'm in z5 and we've had odd weather all year... too hot, too cold, very windy, not enough rain, etc. etc. I've worked hard and my gardens are showing it!!! I'm having my best year ever!

I have harvested from the gardens on a daily basis since spring... early things like herbs & onions, flowers, radishes, pea pods... my Portugal Long Hot and Hungarian Wax peppers were ready at least two weeks earlier than normal and they're loaded with peppers. I'm already giving away zucchini and yellow squashes because I can't eat them fast enough, and yesterday I cooked my first huge batch of green beans. I'm growing beets for the first time and they look wonderful! debating on when to dig or eat those greens. My red onions are fantastic and I'm growing bell peppers successfully for the first time ever with a variety called 'King of the North'! My cherries were good (made cherry preserves :), my blackberries are absolutely LOADED with flowers and small green berries at this point, and my elderberries are setting nicely. My tomatoes are finally just starting to ripen!!! picked my first Sun Gold and Stupice the other night but wanted to finish up the last of the store bought stuff before diving in to the good stuff for the summer. Finally picking some cukes too. All this and my gardens are tiny and super-packed. lol! I froze about 4 qts of dill leaves, so LMK if you know of any recipes that use lots of dill. :O)

Just tossing in a picture. :)

I'm in Party Music's area. We have been dry, dry, dry!Very unusual for upstate / central NY. I was sick the last two weeks to May. So, I was late in getting everything in this year. Picked my first tomatoes this morning (att's Wild Cherry, my favorite!) Peppers are coming along. Eggplant is just flowering. Pole beans are still climbing. I've been picking zucchinis! Blueberries were a bust for me because of the lack of rain. Lots of very tiny shriveled berries. Something ate the broccoli plants even though I took added measures to protect them. I desperately need to pick kale & collards (small but plentiful)!

I do have a lot of recipes that use dill, but I never have that much, except sometimes in the winter, although I do still have some that have usable leaves. I'm letting them go to seed, and I will harvest some of the seeds for the kitchen and plant some in the fall.

Like Veda, I have a lot of chilies that are getting ripe now, including Scotch Bonnet, Habanero, and two kinds of Cayenne. One cayenne is making very large chilies, and they are not quite as hot as the smaller ones. I let the small ones dry on the vine and then save the dried chilies for later use. The other chilies I use in recipes, and when I have enough, I grill them and make chili sauce, which I might do this week-end, even though I have sauce left over from the last batch I made.

I planted a bunch of Chocolate Habanero seeds, and the plants are just now getting strong. I've never grown these before, as I cannot find the plants - and I had to order the seeds and sprout them indoors. Next year I will start them earlier, provided I think they are worth the effort. I also have a few Tobago chili plants, which are supposed to make chilies than taste like Habanero, but with no heat. These I also had to grow from seeds that I ordered, and the one that I planted in a pot outdoors is doing much better than the ones I started indoors, nd so I might try this with some of the Chocolate Habanero plants next year, although they require quite a bit of heat to germinate. It's been in the low 80s recently, which is hot for here, and the chili plants seem to like that, but not the dill.

I also have a bunch (maybe a dozen or so) small cherimoya fruit on my tree. They are all hand-pollinated, and so I am never sure when I do the pollination whether I am doing it correctly or not, and so I am happy to have this much fruit. Mine get ripe in January, but I see them in the Farmers' Markets in other seasons.

Here's a cherimoya from last February - I can't take any more photos until I find my battery charger

This is what I've been up to:

Tomatoes are starting to come in and I'm trying to figure out what to do with all that garlic! I'm thinking I will roast a lot of it and freeze the paste. I don't want to pickle it, as it will most likely turn blue/green.

I've been freezing a lot of my produce as casseroles, lasagnas, and such for future meals rather than canning, although I have already made a case of Annie's Salsa to date. :-)

This is what I've been making with the zucchini:

Link to my: Spinach and Zucchini Lasagna

Not having confidence in food supply's quality in the future, I decided to expand my garden. I need to clear many trees and tree branches to get better sun exposure.

That's me up there cutting off a big branch.

dcarch

A bouquet for my niece :)

My snow peas are running amok this year! supposed to be 3-4' tall and they're already past 7' and falling over on themselves. If anyone knows a GOOD variety, please tell. I've tried several but haven't found a nice sweet one yet.

Every season is different. I have come to accept that. No fruit on trees this year....early heat followed by a week of frost. No biggie. Last year was insane so we needed a break, lol. Good looking blueberries and rhubarb was amazing then got hit by the heat and now is pumping out another batch of solid stalks (i want to dehydrate a big batch i have heard is really good)...new to me.

Getting some early SunGold tomatoes for snacking.

Grapes are looking great and blanched some fresh leaves after pruning tonight for the freezer...

@party_music...i grow a dozen varieties every year of snow and early peas. No year is the same but a few do stand out yet this year we had so much early heat my peas went very woody fast. Last year every pea was wonderful well into the first of August...not great this year. Stringy and woody last weekend. ALL of them...

Tomatoes look great, a dozen zucchini plants are now just three....some critter has been having a way with them, grrr.

I've got shade frames on all my salad and basil and beet beds disappeared one week last month...another critter...(i have always had great basil and beets and beet greens).

Love the lasagna gardengrlz. Your garlic will keep a while stored cool. I just made garlic chips and froze a few containers.

Garlic chips. Low, very low heat sliced thin. I use avocado oil and they come out mild and sweet. I freeze and use for many things.

Well I picked these this morning, have been getting a lot of cherry tomatoes also. My red bells have been coming in along with my Thai and serano peppers, still getting a lot of zucchini, some Chinese long beans and some other beans

Today's Harvest. Tomatoes have just started ripening and so has this fig tree. It's the first year we had enough figs to share with neighbors! YAY! Those figs aren't in the photo. We sliced ours up, and had them on crostini with goat cheese. That was some breakfast!! :-)

You all have made me so envious. Due to many different reasons, my garden didn't get planted until late and I didn't plant as much as I wanted. So far I've gotten a handful of green beans and that is it. The tomatoes are coming on and a few have a nice blush, but there isn't going to be a bumper crop. So, in the meantime, I've been visiting some farmers' stands.

I have a rogue pepper plant and I'm taking guesses on what it actually is. :O)

I ordered Anaheim seeds, planted 12 seeds, and
kept 6 of the plants for myself. One of the 6 plants I kept is producing
completely wrong peppers -- not Anaheim. Here's what one of the real
Anaheim plants look like:

And here's what the rogue pepper looks like:

yay! I'm finally picking my early tomatoes faster than I can eat them. :) Sun Gold is probably my favorite, and it's the only hybrid I grow. lol!

30 something lbs of wild blueberries in the freezer. I picked in the overgrown field where I grew up. Had a big drama when my little dog wandered off while I was picking obsessively. 26 hours later after many hours of friends and neighbors searching he deigned to bark and I found him deep in the woods truly stuck. Relieved and mortified. Whew. Blueberry muffins for the neighborhood tomorrow.

Tomatoes are coming in - Sungolds, Oregon Spring, Magic Mountain and Príncipe Borghese so far. Peppers too.

Lots of broccoli - Piracaiba is a new favorite. Squash is going nuts - got through a cucumber beetle infestation - next infestation is holding off. I put up an small archway and the squash is going UP. Cucumber may be swamped by the squash vines - poor planning on my part. Haricot vert bush beans are about start producing. Napa and Toscani kale. Leeks, carrots and cabbage are coming along. Lots of herbs.

My peas are looking miserable - I mean to pull them but they are still producing a bit. Lettuce needs to be pulled up. And I need to plant some fall crops.

It is very dry in central Maine right now.

oh my! Remember how I keep saying I'm having a fantastic gardening year?! I started picking my blackberries today...

I canned my first batch of salsa today, as well as some peaches and pink half runner beans. The green beans just aren't doing well, it was too hot and they didn't like it.

Sleevendog, what is that tomato on the round white plate, the yellow tomato shot through with red? Pineapple? Big Rainbow? It's lovely.

Annie

Yes Sleevendog, beautiful tomato collage. :-) What are the small black tomatoes?

I've all but given up on the garden for the summer; it's just too hot and humid to deal with it. August is a tired and messy month.

Sleevendog, I'm also curious about the black (literally) cherry tomatoes! Are they 'Indigo Rose'?