I have a few hours this morning and rather than get some real work done I wanted to give a quick vegetable garden update.  We’ve been picking lettuce from the deck planters and now also out of the fenced garden area.  This “Matina Sweet” butterhead is tasty and if you look closer to the fence you’ll see the first two “Packman” broccoli are ready…. even though I’m not exactly sure how to tell when broccoli is fit for harvesting.

Last year’s broccoli went towards raising a healthy, vitamin rich, wild bunny population, this year the fence has really made a difference.  Too bad it doesn’t keep out my newest pest- slugs.

Here’s a slug chewed kohlrabi.  I hate peeling anything off these super fresh home grown veggies, but this one will need it.

The “Bright Lights” swiss chard looks good enough to eat.  I cheated and prestarted in pots, that way when planting out the colors could be arranged 🙂

I just like the looks of red cabbage.  Better soil would have done this plant good but it’s not bad considering the only fertilizer for this bed was the bag of chopped maple leaves dug in during spring planting.  I did break down yesterday and gave everything a dose of miracle grow, we’ll see what that does.

Onions look good, I just hope they make it in spite of my late planting.  They still have a way to go….. if worst comes to worst I guess we can try passing them off as tiny gourmet pearl onions or something.

“Lancelot” leek.  We’ll see if anyone eats these, they’re new this year, but at least they have all year to get to a good size…. unlike the bulbing onions which will die back and bulb up once the days get short enough.

The zucchini seeds are up and growing fast now that summer temperatures are here.  If I had more room it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put in a couple new seeds for a late summer crop…. just in case the vine borers kill off this batch.

Pole beans, bush beans, corn, peppers…. all are starting to come along but for some reason the eggplants are a bit sluggish this year.  Just a few inches tall and they’ve got to deal with flea beetles and the little holes they make, plus some random bug (unfriendly I’m sure) leaving a batch of orange eggs….. possibly potato beetles….

Enough vegetables, it’s about time some flowers got in here and there are plenty coming along for July.  Next post should have a couple blooms, until then all I have are tomato flowers.  Not the most impressive but they make for promising green tomatoes.