It's hot

It's so hard to be a cat:


Some days it's so hot the cats can't even bother to go outside even if the door's open.

Sushi and Katsu kissing, right before they decided to have a 2-day fight:

Sushi is probably just checking out the competition. What good cats :)

More progress

For the first time ever, my eggplant plants have made it far enough to produce beautiful, uneaten flowers:

It would be great to actually get an eggplant this year.

The peppers are going strong. I have lots of the super-hot 5-color peppers. The Jalapenos just started producing:

I'd like to try smoking some to make chipotles.

First Tomato!

While I was gone last week, the first ripe tomato arrived:

It's one of the sweet 100s cherry tomatoes. A few of the large heirloom tomatoes are looking slightly less green also. Can't wait!

Comparison of tomato plants 2008-2010

This was the status of my tomato plants in late June in 2008:


And late June 2009:


And late June 2010:


The ring stakes are all the same in the three pictures. Late spring/early summer was relatively cool and wet for both 2008 and 2009. This spring and early summer were really hot, and in my particular area, also quite rainy. What a difference heat makes!

July Update

Everything I've posted since I got back was from mid-late June. Here's a more recent update:
The cucumbers are getting ready to produce. I have a Japanese slicing cucumber variety this year. Those plants have been climbing the mesh fence trellis really well:


A random insect hangs out on a cucumber blossom on an Arkansas picking cucumber plant:

These plants have physically smaller leaves and flowers, don't grow super fast, but seem pretty tough for cucumbers. I transplanted some in the middle of boiling hot weather, and every single plant survived, even though some leaves died.

Boy, the tomatoes are going nuts. Most of them are already above their cages. Compare this picture even to that from late June:


And some of the heirloom tomatoes are getting downright chunky. Here are some of the Black Sea Man tomatoes:


Beans are also climbing now. The front row are heirloom lima beans, back row are Chinese long beans (asparagus beans). They have been slower to vine out and climb.

Wild Raspberries!

The wild raspberry bushes found everywhere along roadsides, on hillslopes, and in my case along the driveway, are going nuts with berries. 20 minutes of effort produced more than 2 cups of berries:


And I made some sort of cupcake-like dessert (supposed to be heart-shaped) from the raspberries and local blueberries:

Tasted pretty good.

For some reason I have the Prince song "Raspberry Beret" stuck in my head every time I eat some.

Amazing! Actual eggplant plants

Unlike every other year I've tried to grow eggplants in Virginia, this time I succeeded in beating the flea beetles (at least so far):

This was taken right when I got back. The plants on the deck are about to flower now.
I also have several plants in the garden. I did a little experiment in pest control. A few plants were left completely uncovered in the garden while I was gone. I kept a few others in the garden completely covered in row cover material (in the center of a row) until I got back in late June, then took off the row cover. The ones on the deck were never covered.

Results: The ones on the deck, 10+ feet off of the ground, did great without being covered at all. The ones in the garden under the row cover, then exposed, are doing OK. They have some flea beetle damage, but I don't think it's terminal. The ones that had no protection look stunted and punctured with thousands of holes in the leaves.

So there ya go- the easiest thing to do is to get the eggplants way up off the ground in pots.

Peas

Oh yeah, and some of the pea plants on the porch reached 8 feet tall before drying up:


I had pulled all the other pea plants out when I took this picture. Saved some of the dried peas to try to plant in the fall.

Back from Ireland!

Here's what the garden looked like when I got back:



Not too bad really. The size of the tomato plants was shocking. And seeds I had planted at the last second before leaving seemed to do very well. Seems like almost all of the bean seeds came up:



Most cucumbers sprouted:


Even the random pumpkins made it:


There was a LOT of rain, even though it was VERY warm while I was gone. I had the automatic drip irrigation system set up to run half an hour a day, but that was very extraneous in late May and most of June.
It's interesting because even the town of Harrisonburg, only 7 miles away, had very little rain. I was just on the edge of the thunderstorms that were hitting the western mountains.