Greetings my fellow plant enthusiasts! I hope you all are starting to celebrate some successes in your gardens, as we are looking forward to more good things coming our way here in Atlanta. Summer is just around the corner, though we've had a week of blessedly cool and comfortable days around here that have been perfect for getting out in the garden!
You may be able to guess my first success from the cover photo...eggplants are on the horizon! After a few years not being able to get my seedlings to thrive, I finally have some good-looking eggplant plants again. The Melanzane Rosso Di Rotonda variety is taking the lead with four plants sporting flower. Though I have a few Nagasaki Long that have withstood the onslaught of bug-nibbling to be growing nicely, as well.
My first batch of cherry tomato plants is starting to show out. Lots of flowers and fruit on the way! That's one of the reasons we do like growing the smaller fruit--they can be enjoyed much faster than the larger tomato varieties. Which, by the way, tanked for me this year! Growing from seeds is always a challenge, though I gladly take it on each year to be able to grow so many heirloom varieties that you can't find in the grocery store.
Since we only have about six plants that made it to maturity, I'm actually going to try to propagate from suckers this year. A few of these should be ready to snip off soon so I can plant them in the bed and see if they'll give us another round of plants with juicy little globes of tomato to look forward to!
My corn seems to be doing well, so I'm keeping an eye out to make sure I can actually harvest these babies at the right time! We tried growing a few stalks last year, but they got overwhelmed by volunteer tomato plants and I think I missed the window to pull them off. They are in a bed all to themselves this time around--much easier to keep up with!
I could write a whole post just on squash, but I'll keep it short and sweet. The pumpkins seem to be doing well, along with what I think may be a volunteer butternut squash plant. We always seem to get at least one or two volunteer squashes that pop up that outperform everything I plant, haha. Though with the appearance of the first Zucchino Rampicantes, I think it will give the volunteers a run for the money on the abundance side of things.
What is not as abundant as I hoped are the zucchinis and patty pan squashes. They were looking fantastic last month, but I'm not quite sure they're happy in the bed I'm growing them in this year. Lots of baby fruit growing, but then they don't seem to make it to harvesting stage. There are plenty of pollinators, so that's not the issue. We haven't done much with this small bed in a while, so I'm wondering if we may need to bulk up the nutrients in the soil a bit more.
On the fruit side of things, my figs have bounced back nicely from the beetle attack last year. We have quite a bit of fruit growing on the other larger plant, but I'm happy to see this little guy finally start to fill out. My plum tree has exactly two plums left on it, so I'm happy we'll at least have some figs while we wait until next year for the plums to be mature enough to carry fruit!
Finally, I'll finish out our journey with my final garden bed...
...and our fluffy garden friend. This little guy has become a regular visitor in the backyard, which I always love to see. They generally have never been a problem eating any of our garden loot--it's always the chipmunks and the squirrels that are relentless thieves! A few years ago I did have to deter one from nesting in the tomato bed, but otherwise we have a nice peaceful co-existence.
This one has decided the bed surrounded by oregano and lemon balm would make a lovely home. I have a hard time evicting such a cutie out of a largely unproductive bed (I've got a few cucumbers in there, but otherwise just the herbs on the perimeter). I suppose there is a danger in letting them get too cozy as they may realize how delicious my garden loot is, but I just love to watch them while I relax on the back porch!
There are a few other things coming along, as well, but I think that's a good place to end on for now! The farmers market is full of abundance right now, so while I can't wait for more to come out of our own garden, we are definitely not going hungry!
Happy growing!
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