2012 Veg Garden Tomato Update

The tomatoes LOVE the plastic covered cages! After the last two seasons, which we call tomatogeddon, we are thrilled with the progress. We started from seed a bit late so they are still small for the date but there are already flowers so I am sure we will get fruit none the less. Sweety, gold pear, Siletz and an heirloom rainbow blend along with one earlygirl all made the cut to the garden.

2012 Veg Garden Raspberries

We didn't clean up or prune these raspberry canes at all but they're covered with ripe and ripening berries. Did you ever notice the berries grow in bunches of 4-5 and one is almost always very ripe, one just a little less ripe and so on so that you harvest one berry from each bunch every few days? We pick just the darkest ruby red berries for the absolute best flavor.

2012 Veg Garden Strawberries

Our third big bowl of the season!
The patch is only about 6x8 and there are still tons ripening.

2012 Veg Garden Volunteers.

One small piece of summer squash can contain 50-100 seeds. We apparently missed some during fall cleanup as this volunteer squash patch proves. So far we have volunteer broccoli, squash and 2 varieties of lettuce from last year. Fortunately we are going for a 'live green' mulch this year to keep weeds down so a little more chaos won't hurt anything.

2012 Veg Garden Tomatoes Are In.

Along with bush beans, pumpkins and yellow cucumbers. This year we're inter-planting with beneficial flowers. Sunflowers line the cucumber bed E to W for shade, marigolds to fend off bad bugs and zinnia to lure in good bugs. Summer temps are still in the wings so thanks to a tip from Cisco we've wrapped the tomato cages with 1mil plastic secured on the side with duct tape, dirt at the bottom and a tie at the top which allows us to drop the whole tube to the ground during the day. The strawberries are ripe!