Four types of lettuce

I'm growing four types of lettuce. These are all from the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange:

Sweet Valentine Lettuce. The seedlings were pale green until I put them out in the garden. They quickly turned a deep red color in the sun. Took a while to get started, but they are looking good. I am sorry to say that the groundhog seems to especially like this variety :(


Oakleaf Lettuce. According to the Southern Exposure website, this variety was introduced about 1771! I was skeptical about what lettuce shaped like oak leaves would taste like, but it does seem to be resistant to bitterness and shows no sign of bolting. Great in salads.



Anuenue Lettuce. Developed in Hawaii. Also drought-resistant and bolt-resistant. Seeds are said to be able to germinate above 80F. I just started some in the sunroom, with temperatures up to 78F during the day.



And finally the cuteTom Thumb Lettuce. Little crumply leaves are tasty, but it's a little difficult to get all of the dirt out of the crinkles. Starting to bolt a little.

No gold here

But a full rainbow over the house after the storm on Sunday:



I haven't had to water the garden in at least a week because of the storms every other day.

Tiny watermelon, etc.

This is the tiniest watermelon I've ever seen:

I am hopeful my viney plants (watermelon, muskmelon, pumpkin, zucchini, cucumber) will get a boost from the nice warm weather we've been having since my return. The ones planted outside in May suffered from mildewy stuntedness. I had some growing in little pots on the porch while I was gone, and at least the watermelon and muskmelon seemed to do well there.



The eggplant suffered from small black beetles boring holes in the leaves, but the store-bought one now has a nice purple blossom.

I find the chickpeas hard to photograph. The ones I planted in April are starting to flower:

They seem impervious to just about everything. I bought a $1 bag of garbanzo beans at Walmart and just stuck them in the ground, and they haven't had any pests and survived the cold, wet spring and the sudden 100-degree heat wave with no problem.

Tomatoes!!!

My tomato plants may not look beautiful but at least some of them are already putting out (tomatoes):

These are Amish paste tomatoes, Roma-esque. I also have two better boy tomatoes and several tiny sweet 100's. Not all of the tomatoes are producing blooms yet. Bloom production seems random- some tomatoes in pots on the porch are flowering nicely, others have no buds at all. Same in the garden. Not correlated to tomato type, either. Almost all were grown from seed rather than bought as seedlings, which might have something to do with it.

Ominous

When you look east and see this, it's time to go inside:



Actually, this one went just north of us. We got some pretty strong winds, but that's all. The weather radio alerted me to this storm about 5 minutes after it blew through. At least the radio seems to be working.

Sushi cat was sort of freaking out for a while during the storm, but then she settled down to a long nap. Action shot of a wake-up yawn (looks like she's eating the garden shed):

Back from Ireland

So what happens when you leave your garden for 2.5 weeks? Lots of weeds and grass in the garden. The fence was falling over in a couple of places. I caught a rabbit and a groundhog inside the garden over the last two days. I did some fence repair yesterday- reinforced the posts and added metal stakes to the bottom of the netting. I also added some metal screening to the corner of the garden next to the shed- I suspect the groundhog was sneaking through there.





The peas did not do well. The vegetation in this picture is mostly weeds.



A view of the tomatoes, random peppers, etc., and chickpeas. I already cleaned out the weeds and grass from the tomato bed by the time I took this picture. I lost two tomato plants to Colorado potato beetle larvae, but I had extras on the porch so I replanted after digging out all of the larvae from the soil. They look like bright orange-red lumps of ooze.



The lettuce did pretty well. It tastes sort of bitter though- no surprise since we had near 100-degree temperatures and alternating dry spells and torrents of rain, apparently.

Rain and disease

I took these pictures in late May before I left for Ireland. We had cool, cloudy, rainy weather for weeks. It took a toll on the tomato plants- the vegetable grower next door diagnosed early blight and said their tomatoes had the same problem:


The lettuce didn't seem to mind. Finger for scale. Check out how much they grew in the next post. The pollen is from the black walnut tree on the other side of the shed.





The grass in the field was tall when I left. And even taller now- somewhere in between knee and thigh high.