Hmm.  Given that it is summer, and my blog layout design is a “winter-y” design.. I think perhaps I should get around to finding or making a non-seasonal layout.

Anyway.  Summer is definitely here where we live.  This weekend it’s supposed to get to over 110 degrees.  My poor garden, I’m glad I built the shade structure over it.

My celebrity tomato plant keeps getting attacked by tomato worms (they burrow into the tomato and eat it from the inside, causing it to rot on the vine), AND those that don’t get attacked end up cracking.  I just can’t seem to win with that plant.  My cherry tomato plant is still plodding along despite that nearly all of the bottom branches are completely bare (no stems at all) from having to clip off the dying ones.  And my better boy is now trying to take over the box that IT is in (like the celebrity did) and has a few branches that span the entire width and length of the box (4×4) plus a foot or two.  It’s still budding tomatoes too, although I wish the birds would bugger off… (if it’s not worms, it’s birds).  I’ve only managed to get one good tomato off of it in the last month thanks to the darn birds, and I picked that one before it was completely ripe.

My watermelon plants started growing like crazy, all the way up the five foot trellis with one of them now snaking horizontally across the top of the trellis, too.  I think I spotted at least three good budding melons so hopefully by the end of the month we may have some big enough that we can eat?  They’re up high too, so I won’t have to worry about my daughter picking them off long before their time.

Despite that my cucumber plants are sprouting baby cukes like crazy, they never get very far (I presume due to the heat)… I think I found *ONE* little one this morning that seems to be getting further along in growth than all its predecessors, so maybe I’ll get a lone cucumber, we’ll see.

The corn was a bust.  It got hot too fast and many of them started drying up before I had a chance to pick them, so I left about six ears out for the birds to pick at and eat if they want.  They weren’t very big either, maybe six or seven inches was the longest ear of corn.  There are still a few small ears that I left on hoping they would grow, but I’m not holding out much hope.

I pulled up the peas last weekend, they were done.  I left the beans but they don’t seem to be producing anymore, so I’ll probably do the same with them soon.

There are quite a few things I will do differently next time around, in addition to planting earlier in the spring, many of the plants will get their own designated garden beds so they don’t have to compete with other plants, and to increase yield.

So now I just have to start planning for next spring and figure out how much more timber I’ll need to buy, and what size beds to build, in addition to purchasing the soil ingredients again as I have very little left from the spring planting.  I’m not sure I’ll do another shade structure though.  There seem to be quite a few people who garden around here without it, so if the one I have survives until next year, I’ll experiment and see how the uncovered beds do compared to the covered ones.

Well, I got my shade structure built, using 3/4″ PVC pipe and a 50% shade cloth.  The instructions I found for the structure said not to glue the pieces together, but after a couple of mildly windy days, I found I HAD to at least glue the corner joints, otherwise it kept popping open and sagging.

I tied down the shade cloth with rope to stakes pounded into the ground which are also holding the bottom of the structure to the ground as well (tied with thin steel cable).  I’m hoping it will hold up to our monsoon weather.  We had some stronger winds yesterday, and it did fine then.  We’ll see how it manages thorughout the rest of the season.

We’ve been eating a few peas here and there, but so far that is the only plant that has produced anything edible as of yet, and even then, only 2-6 pods at a time, so not enough for a meal. LOL  The corn is at least 2 ft tall so far and were a little unstable due to the soil compressing down from 5-6″ to more like 3.5-4″, so I mixed and added some more soil the other evening until the level was at the top of the raised bed.  Once that settles I’ll add more again to the top so the corn has at least 7″ of soil to support the stalks, and I still need to set up some nylon grid net horizontally to assist with supporting the stalks when they’re taller.  I’ll have to do that this weekend I think so it’s installed well before we leave for vacation next month.

There are a couple of tomatoes that look like they’re contemplating turning red (finally), but only just as they’re still quite green.  But the plants themselves have gone crazy in growth and rival only the corn in height so far.   Well, except one stalk of peas that’s climbing the trellis and is probably about three feet tall, but that’s only one vine.

One of my cucumber plants flowered, we’ll have to see if it sprouts anything, and the watermelon leaves are finally coming in but the plants are still fairly short.  We had a few more strawberry plants produce a flower so hopefully we’ll see a few more of those soon.  The carrots are growing (probably about 4″ tall) but not yet ready for harvesting.  We pulled one the other day and it was less than 1/4″ thick and just barely tinted orange, couldn’t even be considered “baby” carrot yet.

We have a couple of jalepeno peppers  growing, and those plants are still fairly short, too.  The green onions and chives are slowly growing, but those are probably going to be the slowest of all the plants.

I’d still like to try my hand with sweet potatoes, I’ll need to get some more wood to raise their section up a foot and mix some more soil as well as order the smallest amount of sweet potato starters I can possibly get.  I can’t use the sweet potatoes in stores as those are the spreading ground vines and I need the compact bush type so they stay within their section.

I’m hoping we’ll get a tomato soon, I’m not sure why they’re taking so long to redden unless it’s the excessive heat.. I’ll have to look into that.