I am seeing an explosion in produce this week as the tomatoes are coming into their own. I picked the first of the heirlooms a couple of days age netting a couple of large, delicious Cherokee Carbon tomatoes and a large Lemon Boy. There will be more today and a lot this week. Zucchini are coming in at a reasonable rate and Natalie made stuffed zucchini last night. The cherry tomatoes are producing in abundance. I needed to run a rope from the top of the large cherry tomato cage to the crossbeam of the hanging basket support on the deck. The plants are almost 8 feet tall. I picked the first chocolate cherry tomato yesterday. I tied up the San Marzano tomatoes, but the tomatoes are still small.

The Champion and Early girl plants stopped ripening over a week ago, but now are starting to produce. It is strange how they will produce some fruit right away and then stop for a while.

We had the first head of brocolli last week and I will cut two or three more today. I am ready to pull up the second batch of beets. Peppers are producing well, the Shishito plants are loaded and there are 3 or 4 large green peppers ready to pick. The rabbits (or squirrels) have been attacking the Jalapeno plants. There are some small eggplants and at least one should be ready in about a week.

I pulled up the peas which were a total bust and planted “Lazy Housewife” pole beans. I learned how to massage Kale with salt and oil and we used some on Bacon, Kale, and Tomato sandwiches and it was quite good.

I’ve been munching on blackberries when I am out in the garden and probably will pick some today.

Tomatillo plants are growing well and have lots of fruit, but ripe fruit is still a couple of weeks off.

All in all, it’s been a good gardening year so far except for the Alaskan Peas and the fact that I couldn’t find any Okra plants. I’ll plant it from seed next year. I’ve been able to keep up with the weeding – I am hitting the tomato patch with the string trimmer which seems to work well if I pull the weeds close to the plants by hand. The rest of the garden is either my hand or with the hula hoe.