The Silvery Fir Tree tomato, in the small hanging basket, has been almost the only tomato up until now to produce any ripe fruit this year! Other plants are JUST now starting to ripen fruit, but what an amazingly late year it has been.

Meanwhile, nothing stops this intrepid little plant. Such a small container, and yet it keeps producing. Not the best flavor, buy hey, when you have no other tomatoes, any tomatoes are wonderful!

Garlic has been harvested, cured and cleaned.

Below is a photo of the result. Not enough garlic planted this year, I can clearly see that now! And no really long storing varieties. There will be tears and gnashing of teeth when we run out and have to buy them!

I will have to do better this year with my planting. Just ordered up 8 new varieties today.

Vostani, Tzan, Simoneti, Russian Red, Romanian Red, Red Janice, Italian Late & Brown Tempest. I have never ordered from this supplier, Keene Organic before, so I am hoping they have good quality stock. I really liked that they allow you to order a customized sample pack!

For the past couple of years I have grown the Tumbling Tom tomato in a hanging basket. It produced well enough, and since it’s a very early producer I grew it again. It’s not a very exciting tomato though.

This year, I decided to try a Silvery Fir Tree in my hanging basket. So far, the plant seems to like it, even though the container is pretty small. The tomatoes are a little cat-faced, but that’s OK.

I was just looking through photos of the garden from last year, and found this photo:

Wow!

This year I have only a few green tomatoes as yet on my many plants. Granted, they went in the ground two weeks later this year… but it seems we are still way behind this year.

My cucumbers are just setting the first fruit right now, so we are WAY behind with that as well.

I did not get any fall planting of onions done last fall, and though this years onions are coming along nicely, they are not ready for harvest just yet.

Oh, to have such a harvest as in that photo.

Right now, I am only harvesting broccoli, cabbage, peas, and of course a variety of greens (lettuce, mustard, collard greens, swiss chard etc), basil, cilantro and of course garlic.

I did get my first small eggplant and squash the other day, as well.

Today I harvested the first fennel from one of my earthboxes.

Last year I grew fennel for the first time ever, in containers, not in earthboxes, but I let it go to far and it bolted and flowered before I got to them, so I just let them be for the bees to enjoy, and the bees did LOVE the fennel blooms.

This year, I’d like to actually get to eat some fennel!

Yesterday I harvested some more earthbox garlic, and here is the yield from one single box of Italian Easy Peel garlic. I am happy with the results!

Everything is behind this year it seems. Spring was cold and rainy. Summer never seemed to want to arrive. Crops were late or failed to germinate. I fell behind in even posting anything to my blog, for a variety of reasons.

But: Here I am again:

This year was my first season growing garlic in earthboxes.

I just harvested the first batch a couple of days ago. Here are some photos:
(Just click on any photo to enlarge it)

I also harvested some garlic grown in-ground at the same time.

I’ll take photos of the results of that harvest later. Right now it is so hot outside, I don’t even want to go outside. It went straight from upper 60′s to upper 90′s with no time to adjust. I like it much better in the cooler weather!

Yesterday George found this very interesting looking insect in the garden. It turns out it is a snakefly – I got an ID from Davesgarden.com, which is a great site for all things gardening. It’s a beneficial insect, predates on many garden pests, like aphids and others. I had never seen one before today!

Here are some photos of this interesting creature:

Here is a link with more information about the Snakefly:

Snakefly information

Great photos of snakefly

Things are so late this year. Usually I have most everything planted and done this time of year.

I did get part of my tomato plants (11) in the ground yesterday (+4 in earthboxes), but that’s just about 3 weeks later than usual. And I was hoping to get a little time to be in the garden today, but it rains, rains, rains again.

On top of that, the slugs have started going after the tomato seedlings in the greenhouse at night, so now I am moving them indoor for protection at nightfall.

My husband ran into a young man here in our area who has created his own composters! He is selling them to earn money for college.

They are very impressive and very well made. Here are a couple of photos of them – click to enlarge:

For more detailed information download this brochure:

College-Composter.pdf

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