Hello friends! How is it July already? Another year seems to be flying right on by, though I'm hoping the growing season slows down just a bit. After a promising start, June hit like a hammer with heat and a long stretch with little to no rain. The few things I had producing stopped fruiting, teaching lots of patience in gardening once again.
Despite morning and evening watering when we could get to it, there's nothing quite like a good summer shower to hydrate the fruits and veggies. Thank goodness the last week finally saw a more usual summer weather pattern with some nice drenching showers in the mix. With the rain, the plants have bounced back nicely for the most part.
The top producer so far is the pattypan squash. You can see in my cover photo my most recent harvest. We have four plants that have been producing for a while, and one more that is just starting to produce. I'll gladly take all I can of these little beauties. So tasty and easy to cook!
The rest of the squash is a little behind, besides my pumpkins. Though the one established pumpkin on the vine has just started to rot recently. Ugghhh! Looks like there are some new babies further down the vine, though, so fingers crossed we can still get at least one for the year! Otherwise, we have quite a few spaghetti squash on the volunteer plant, candy roasters finally popping up, a very green butternut squash, and the bottom right of the collage is one many of you may recognize from last year: zucchino rampicante! Everything might be late from last year, but I have high hopes our hard work will still pay off.
My tomato vines are also full of fruit, but nothing turning ripe just yet. After plucking off some early hornworms, I haven't seen any since. However, with all the recent rain we'll be vigilant yet again to keep up with the pests as we wait for these lovely little gems to start to turn!
The cucumber trellis is working nicely. We got about three cuckes off a few weeks ago, then they also stopped putting out fruit for a bit. Looks like we've got some coming along again--both regular cucumbers and finally lemon cukes. Again, fingers crossed for an improving harvest. It's not summertime without some homemade pickles!
The watermelons have expanded like crazy. I finally found one tiny little fruit. I'm not sure if we'll actually get any that fully grow and ripen, but my sister is starting to pull some off of her more mature plants. Perhaps she'll share...
I'll finish out with another happy surprise. Last month I showed how our new little fig tree is coming along, and the established one in the front yard has lots of fruit waiting to ripen. After months of no sign of life, the persimmon cutting I bought has shown new growth! I'm so happy that all of the new fruit trees I got from the nursery are looking good. The baby plums are still getting nibbled up a bit, though they have enough new growth that I think they're going to be just fine. It may take a few years before we see much from these. It sure is fun to watch and wait!
Perhaps not the best month, but we're trucking along as usual. Enjoying what we get when we get it, and keeping the kitchen full from the farmers market otherwise.
Hoping all the other Hive gardeners have had a good month! Thanks to 
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