how's it growin'? (mid-june 2011 part 1)

I have been bad this season.  Last spring/summer season I took pictures of the plants every week as a journal to note their progresses.  This season I haven't been doing so.  I also haven't done any "garden update" posts.  I was going to do one about a month ago when my dad asked me how the garden was doing.  I took some pictures, but never sat down to write a post.  Oh well, better late than never.

So, here are some of the plants (pictures were taken last week)...

First up are the cukes.  These are hybrid Japanese cucumbers (tasty queen 10).  They are supposedly extra early and high yielding.  I don't know about extra early, but it does look like they will produce well.  I picked my first cucumber on Saturday, then four more on Monday.

They are not great climbers though.  As you can see, we are trying to train them up the trellis/arbor.  The idea is for them to climb up using the (neon pink!) strings.  On the top, there are criss-crossed bamboo sticks and wooden bars so they can climb and grow across the beds.  The arbor they create will provide shades for the veggies growing under it on those hot summer days.  The arbor will cover 2 beds.  The edible luffa gourds and bitter melons in the next two beds will climb up the same arbor.

Here's a picture of that first cucumber.  It was harvested after this picture was taken.

These are the greens growing in the same bed with the cucumbers.  There are spinach, red and green salad bowl lettuces, tung ho (edible chrysanthemum), a-choy lettuces, and New Zealand spinach (you can't see them as they are still small).  I sowed these greens and the brassicas in the next bed really late (a little more than a month ago).  I'm sure glad I did.  The weather's been cool and they are loving it.

The edible luffa gourds are growing slowly.  It enjoys hot weather, so it's one of the veggies that's not happy about the cooler temperature.

These are some of the brassicas growing in the same bed with the luffa gourds (mizuna, southern giant curled India mustard, summerfest komatsuna).

Here are our pole beans (Kentucky Wonder, frosty lima, yard long).  Kentucky Wonder is the healthiest of the bunch at the moment.  Frosty lima is still recovering from the slug attack earlier.  Yard long seems to be the choice for the aphids.  The yard long beans on the north side (righthand side of the picture) of the bed are infested with aphids.  Last week I wiped aphids off the stems and cut off some heavily infested leaves and tips.  We'll see if they recover and produce beans.  I did see some ladybugs having feasts.  I hope they'll bring over some family and friends.

I prefer our "V" shaped trellis over the "A" shaped trellis.  It makes harvesting much easier.  We built an "A" shaped trellis two years ago.  I had a really hard time picking beans.

This is one of our nightshade beds (we have 6).  The five plants you see in this picture were purchased.  We did start some peppers and eggplants from seeds, but they were growing wayyyyyyy too slowly, so we had to buy most of our eggplants and pepper plants.  The sun gold cherry tomato in the front was the only purchased tomato plant this year.  All of our other tomato plants were started from seeds.  This one is a bit behind the other tomatoes.

There are a few flowers on the eggplants.  I hope I'll see some baby eggplants soon!