The garden so far

This summer has been a very challenging gardening experience. The weather here was cold and rainy until well into July. That's left the garden at least a month behind in it's growth cycle. Some things just didn't grow at all this year like the golden apples on my apple tree. And some things are very behind, like the rest of the garden.

So far I've been able to harvest a couple handfuls of red strawberries and a couple handfuls of white Alpine strawberries. The white ones are still producing a few berries every week and the red Ever bearing varieties will probably come back and produce some more later in the summer. I've harvested some lettuce, but it's now bolted. My first round of spinach started in the greenhouse bolted very early before I could harvest it and since the temperatures at the time were in the 50's I have no idea why it did. But my second planting, which went directly into the garden has done pretty well. We ate some of it the other day.

I planted some peas this year as I do every year and then threw away the seed packet. When the peas started producing decent sized pods I picked them and put them into a salad to eat. The pods were so stringy and tough we just couldn't eat them. In past years I've had no problem with my snap peas being tough. Hubby asked me what variety I planted and I had no idea. I'm not very good at keeping track of that kind of thing when it comes to my garden. But that got us thinking that maybe I'd planted shelling peas. To test the theory I let them grow and mature more before I picked more of them. Yesterday I brought in a decent sized bowl full of pea pods, shelled them and had a small bowl full of peas! They tasted great, so I guess I planted shelling peas. I'll have to read the packet more carefully next time. :)

There are a few other veggies in the garden that are growing but not quickly. I've got broccoli that I could probably cut next week and I've got little bitty pickles and yellow squash on their vines. The Pumpkin patch, which was planted in straight compost, seems to be producing something but the little female flowers look they are attached to zucchini or some strange long skinny pumpkin rather than a round one. I guess I'll see what comes of it.

The carrots, beats, soybeans, corn, rutabaga, parsnips, potatoes, and pole beans are growing as well, but there's nothing to harvest there yet. I planted artichoke and okra as a test this year to see if I could do it, but the weather has made this year a bad year to test things. They are growing but aren't very tall yet. Not sure if they'll produce anything. And last but not least the 4 tomato plants I bought and planted have flowers! Maybe I'll have some tomatoes this year. I planted them in pots and have them sitting next to the greenhouse in as full a sun as I have. We'll see what happens.