Looking good @shrinkrap - very nice development on the tomatoes! 
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Won’t be long!!
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In which I am a success at bok choy.
And a miserable failure at broccoli rabe. (For the second year in a row!)
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Broccoli raab/rabe/rapini is very sensitive to day length. You have to start the plants at the correct time for that variety. They also like cool weather and bright sunlight. Most Brassicas like the short days of early spring or fall.
Finally. took a few pictures. First up:
Marina di Chioggia winter squash, preparing to overtake a brush pile. This keeps the squash high and dry.
The Water Spinach is in need of weeding!
Toona sinensis, Cedrela sinensis is also known as Fragrant Spring Tree. In the early spring, the tender young leaves taste sort of like leeks and are good stir-fried. They make a tasty, crunchy garnish if carefully crisp-fried.
This one needs pruning to get the branches lower and easier to harvest.
The Wall of tomatoes is 60 feet long (18 M) and over six feet high(1.8 M).
I made a trough to hold water near the plants. The soil outside that zone is dry, stunting even weeds this year. The variety is Blue Beech, another Italian heirloom prized for fresh eating as well as processing. They’re still sizing up as green fruit.
The Yellow Crookneck squash plants are huge.
Little squash are starting to form.
It’s light enough to see; time to grab a hose and irrigate. Another scorcher of a day is predicted.
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That’s not a veggie garden - It’s a FARM! Beautiful.
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Thanks! The garden is somewhere in-between farm and garden, a “farden”?
After watering, round one, I did some digging in the potato rows:
Despite their size, they’re still “new” potatoes, with a very thin skin and different texture from matured, cured spuds. The larger ones on the left are Adirondack Blue, Blue inside and out. The larger yellow ones are Keuka gold, better flavored than Yukon gold.
The top middle are a very interesting yellow potato, Skagit Valley Gold, bred to capture much of the flavor of the famous “Papa Amarilla” of Peru, which is tough to grow in this country. In Peru, THE Papa Amarilla refers to one of many yellow-fleshed, yellow-skinned potatoes. The tubers are smaller, don’t have an apparent dormancy and have perhaps the richest, best flavor. Potato wizard, Tom Wagner, developed the Skagit Valley Gold and it is delicious! So far, it’s my favorite, in terms of flavor. I grew Papa Amarilla/ Papa Criolla years ago and I’m not sure I could tell the flavor apart from the S.V. Gold.
Below the small Skagit Valley Gold are Huckleberry Gold, purple skin with yellow flesh. Caribe are the big ones on the right.
Another variety, which had such dense vines, I couldn’t dig tubers, is Rozette. I’ll wait until some die back occurs before trying to dig some.
Each of the above samples came from one plant of each type. Less than 1/4 of the sample plant’s tubers were dug. Looks like a good year for potatoes!
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Thanks for this. I’ll replant at the end of August, maybe, when it cools off. Or they’ll just reseed themselves, as they seem to want to.
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What is this, and do I need to kill it? There are a bunch of them on my eggplant.
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Looks like it could be lady bug larvae; if so, don’t kill.
A Google search of lady bug pics. There should be a red-orange stripe.
Oh! Thanks. I killed some of them, unfortunately. They are awfully big to be larva! Bigger than ladybugs.
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I could be wrong!
I don’t think you are. There was a ladybug hanging out a few weeks ago. Well, I don’t need too many larvae. I don’t have that many plants. I feel bad, now, though. But they are very creepy looking.
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Our garden is somewhere between a pot and a garden - so maybe a parden? Your tomato plot alone looks bigger than my while yard!
Love the colors of your potatoes.
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Shrinkrap is correct; that black grub is definitely a Ladybug larvae. There are many species, with many color variants in the larvae. It’s likely eating mites or aphids and/or their eggs.
Creepy? Spiders are creepy! Eyes glued all over their faces…eww! Syrphid fly maggots are creepy. Many of the “good guys” are not very charismatic. Still, they do good work.
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I am filled with regret, since I’m always so happy when I see a ladybug on one of my plants. It was my fear of the unfamiliar. Also, I like spiders.
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Hope there’s enough time for these soybean plants! Put them in after harvesting garlic. Other pic is “cutting celery” which I tried out of curiosity. It took ages to show itself but is a nice celery tasting herb.
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I peeked over my bamboo fence to see how the garden was doing and I noticed that one of the corn stalks has this “sprout” coming out of it. A good sign I hope?
Side note: we’ve had a particularly hot summer in Jersey with a few heat waves under our belt already. I don’t see any baby tomatoes coming in yet. Peppers yes, the corn as you see, but the tomato plants are very late bloomers. Is that common with excessive heat? I do not recall another season where I wasn’t starting to see some small green tomatoes by now.
I seem to recall the plants bloom, but the flowers are infertile, and the flowers fall off. That sometimes, but not always happens here.
Slightly north of you, probably, and my tomatoes are doing alright, but not as well as last year. I’ve harvested 2 bloody butchers and 5 sungolds so far.
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I’m having tomato plant withdrawal… maybe I should just give in and a buy a small plant somewhere already.
