Garden update

Vegetable tally: 6 zucchini so far - -all delicious

On the vine: seven zucchini, several dozen tiny green tomatoes.









Unknown: The broccoli and cauliflower plants are large, but they show no signs of budding.



It may well be too hot for them. They have some damage that looks similar to the mes on the cabbage, but far less. *If* they survive, they might, maybe, decide to bud once it cools off in the autumn. Maybe. The sweet potato plants look very happy - -it remains to be seen how well they'll produce.




The carrots also look very happy, but again, who knows.




I have completely given up on my poor little garden cabbages. They looked like Irish lace a few days ago,


and now they look like wrecks of former cabbage.

I found two little horned slugs and a whole lot of greenish slimy stuff on what would have been heads had they made it. I dragged the slugs across the yard to feed them to the birds, but I strongly suspect that two couldn't done that much damage and I can't get in to find any more. Poor little cabbages. Next year, they'll be planted in amongst a whole lot of marigolds. I'm told that cabbage moths and their slugs don't like the smell of marigold at all and they should be safe. (I had actually intended to get some in this year, but I didn't make it sufficiently high priority and it never happened.) The cabbage in the potted garden looks a little better, but it clearly has a problem, too.

The buttercup and butternut squashes seem to have lots of flowers but they never fruit. they occasionally get a little squash thingy that gets to an inch or so and then it turns yellow and desiccates. Unfertilized, I guess. I'll have to figure out how to do it myself...






The strawberries and blueberries have produced a couple of berries each -- the rabbits got brave and came in and made short work of one of the blueberry plants (it has never gotten big enough to survive that.) We have never gotten any of the fruit, though, because the birds always see them before they're ripe enough for us. One day we'll get bird nets...for this year, I just want to keep the plants healthy enough to make it through the winter.

*sigh* Well, at least the zucchini and tomato are looking prolific, so we'll get something out of this exercise.