Peas, Cherry Tomatoes and Early Girls, Oh My! Community Garden Update

The community garden plot has really  changed in the three weeks since I last posted.  I didn't take pictures of everything, but the things that are really different were captured at twilight the a few days ago.  The pictures are either a bit dark or the flash went of, which looks kind of spooky.

My Aunt made us a sign for the garden on her laser etcher:

I love it.  I hope the bees can read, because I mean it, they are very welcome. Actually, they are cordially invited for as much nectar and pollen as they can hold.  As are the lady bugs for all the aphids they can stuff in their own and their children's mouths.

Here is one of the lovely ladies, now.  Suddenly, I remember the scene from A Bug's Life when the male lady bug gets very upset about someone assuming he is a girl just because he is a lady beetle.  Sorry.  I mean handsome man.

The carrots are really growing.  We thinned them out a bit more this weekend and were pleasantly surprised to find some very tasty carrots at the end of the stalks we grabbed onto.

These are some rainbow carrots we pulled up.  Some went directly into my cousin's mouth, so this is not all of them, but you get the idea.  They are colorful and delicious.

Here are some of our plain, boring old orange carrots.  The one with three legs is not really boring.  My aunt was reminded by this carrot to tell me about a contest that happens in some small village in England where locals bring in vegetables that look like naughty bits to a church to be judged.  I can't, for the life of me, think why this carrot reminded her of this story.  Hm.  Anyway.

This is a close up of the rainbow carrot stalks. You can tell which ones are most likely to be purple without actually pulling them up.  The other ones can be orange, yellow or even white.

The cucumbers are looking very nice.  It has been very warm here over the last couple weeks.  There are actually some small cucumbers starting to grow on the largest vines already.  I planted a few more hills of cucumbers to fill in the empty space up front, however only one survived the heavy bird predation. We now have a huge open area in front where the cucumber mounds are empty and the spinach and lettuce are pulled up.  The lettuce was going to seed, so it had to come up as well.

Somehow I missed taking a picture of the potatoes that have come up and started growing very nicely, but the hilling for those will take up some of the empty space.

We have been harvesting cherry tomatoes from the garden for two weeks, almost.  They are very  sweet and delicious.

This is my Aunt's hand with some of the first young cherry tomatoes.  The first ones were the tiniest.

We have been harvesting peas everyday the last few days.  The kids can't stay out  of them, and devour them raw and crunchy before we even get them into the fridge.  This last time I picked more than Molly could eat and this is what we have:

The peppers are Anaheim chilies and there are the first two ripe early girl tomatoes in the bowl as well.  My husband ate two of these chilies and said they weren't that hot right before the tears started coming out of his eyes.  He usually has a pretty high tolerance for spicy hotness, so I didn't eat one. These peppers are off that plant that looks kind of weird and sickly and the peppers are all half black. I wonder if that is why they are so hot.

Here is a picture of the first pea harvest before we went to my aunt and uncles house for barbecue stakes.  We snacked on raw peas and cherry tomatoes that night with dinner.

Here is a small purple bush bean.  I have some bad news about these beans.  I think the community garden went two days without watering last week.  I usually check on it everyday and water if it looks like it hasn't been done, but last week when I got there after skipping a day, it looked really dry and half of the bush beans' leaves had fallen off.  They look really sad now.  I hope they pull out of it.

This is a picture from last week of the scarlet runner beans.  There is now at least one small bean developing on one of these plants.  I remember from last time I grew these that it took a while for the flowers to start setting, but once they did there were beans everywhere.  I hope that happens now.

The early girl tomato is really laden with fruits and they are just starting to turn red.  I picked the first two yesterday.  They were small, but some of these green ones are huge.

This is the super fantastic which is really getting loads of tomatoes on it.  They are not very big yet, but they are getting bigger every day.

It really is a bushy mess inside its cage, but I just haven't trimmed it back yet.

Here are a couple of the Roma tomatoes.  We are going to get a lot of these a bit later.  This plant, if you don't remember, was quite a bit smaller and a little behind the others.

In this picture you can see three small pepper plants.  The front largest one is the new garden salsa pepper I planted a couple of weeks ago the other two are Cheyenne and jalapeno that are finally recovering from being chewed on by my cat, Cooper.  The Jalapeno actually is starting to set fruit.

This is the heirloom tomato I planted at the same time as the new peppers, the Bradley pink tomato.

This tiny pepper plant is a Thai hot pepper.  It already has little peppers on it.  I am a little scared to try these.  The one is back is the jalapeno that was pilfered from earlier in the year with small new fruit showing up every day.

The coordinator of the community garden asked me last week if it was okay if he gave my number to a photographer for our local paper, The Wenatchee World, who had mentioned he might want to get our picture with our garden for a story in the paper.  We haven't heard from anyone yet, but that would be kind of cool.  I don't really like having my picture taken, unless I am wearing a costume, but I am proud of the garden my Aunt and I have been able to grow so far this year.  It looks pretty nice with the custom laser etched plant stakes and sign and the huge tomato plants.  Our tomatoes are, by far, the largest, greenest and most fruitingest tomatoes in the whole community garden, so far.  I am sure some of the other people's will catch up. There are some that look very nice.  I am not putting down any other gardeners gardens at all.  Most of the gardens are very nicely done, but our tomatoes are the best, so far.  One person actually asked me if we were sneaking in fertilizer.  I won't lie and say we never considered the idea, but we haven't added anything but seeds and water to our plot.  It was nicely composted and tilled when we got there this spring.  I think the difference has been that we have been supplimenting the automatic sprinklers with our own almost nightly waterings and keeping the weeds pulled pretty well.  Have a good week, until I have something new to post.