Garden Harvest & Update June 26

Here's this week's garden update. We've been cooking here in Hockeytown, temps have been much hotter than average and the garden has been LOVING it. Last week I managed to move our leftover mulch into the garden paths-several inches deep-and I'm really liking how it looks. I'm hoping it's deep enough to keep the weeds at a minimum. The sand in the foreground of this photo is from our neighbor's pool. Why? Well, I didn't think I'd have enough mulch to cover all the garden paths and the neighbor said, "Do you want my extra sand?" and I never turn down free sand! =) 

In this picture below, you get an overview of most of the garden.Everything has grown enough that you can barely see my strings marking my square foot dimensions. (yay!)  There's a bed at the far left of the photo that is kinda cut off. My brassicas are very happy, I have heads of cauliflower forming!!!

Here's a photo of one of my MANY itty bitty baby watermelons, Sugar Baby variety. This one is about the size of my thumbnail. The watermelons have set fruit about 3 weeks earlier than last year, but I think my garden as a whole is about 3 weeks ahead of average, due to our lack of winter.

Bryce and I ripped out the roasted peas last week and these are some of my cukes that are starting to climb up the back privacy fence.

Bryce's corn is FOUR FEET TALL. Isn't it only supposed to be knee-high by the 4th of July? Well he planted it super early, I think before Mother's Day, and I've been watering it regularly and I've been giving it fish emulsion every 2 weeks. Corn is such a heavy feeder and this is a new bed with not so great soil-but it's clearly happy. Many of the corn stalks are starting to tassel already. Crazy!

Moving around to my front yard garden, here's a shot of my Rutgers tomatoes. They are setting fruit nicely!!

Also in the front yard garden are some chili red peppers and jalepeno peppers. All have abundant fruit growing. It won't be long before I'm making pepper jelly for my BFF!!!

Check out my crazy assortment of stakes for the tomatoes out front! I've got whatever junk I had laying around used as stakes-long sticks, bent poles, handles from tools, political sign wire stakes---you name it. Now I do realize that these are not tall enough, but they're working until I can find some longer branches or maybe I'll just buy some bamboo or something.

I have no photos of what I've harvested this week. (slacker!) I've been using my basil, cilantro, parsley and rosemary for cooking, and the kids conned me into picking some carrots yesterday. I'm up to 10lbs total for 2012!!!

We'll close with something pretty. I love my cosmos!!!!!

This post linked to Daphne's Dandelions.