Giant Tomato Plants and Zucchini & Bean Harvest

First  - let me just show you my giant, out of control tomato plants.

It's hard to tell from that pic, but the tops of some of them are as tall (or maybe even a little taller) than I am (5'5'')!  Many of them are more than twice as tall as the tomato cages they're in, so I headed to Ocean State Job Lots yesterday to get some stakes to help support them. I'm in awe, because I started every one of these plants from seed, on my windowsill back in March. My friend Karen always says that tomatoes are the most amazing plant in the world because from a *teeny* tiny seed you get a giant sprawling plant and so much bounty. I totally agree.

Still no ripe big beefs yet (any day now, I hope!), but I've picked a couple pints of cherry tomatoes so far.

cherry tomatoes starting to ripen

I'm also excited because it looks like I'll get a good zucchini harvest for the first time in a few years. The last couple summers the darn vine borers killed my squash  plants before I could pick anything. Somehow the bugs haven't found them yet this year! 

Zukes!

A zuke hiding among the stems

It's also green bean harvest time.

Beans, beans, good for your heart...

Today's haul:

Should have a ground cherry harvest sometime soon too. 

The yellow one in the center is almost ready to drop. They're ripe when they fall to the ground, hence their name.

My back garden area, planted a couple weeks ago, is starting to come in. There are purple and green snap beans in the center section and transplanted ground cherry volunteers in the right. I still need to plant some fall crops (probably carrots, spinach, arugula, radishes - whatever other seeds I have on hand) in the left section (not shown).

Beans (left) and ground cherries (right)

I'm so happy the ground cherries I transplanted are growing! They looked pretty small and wilty right after I moved them. Wasn't sure they were going to make it.

Sad little ground cherries three weeks ago.

I can't remember if I talked about this in my last entry - but woo. There are ground cherry volunteers *all* over my garden. They're everywhere. I'd say that after crabgrass they're my most common weed. The average ground cherry plant yields *300* little fruit during the season. They grow in husks and are ripe when they fall to the ground. This means that by the fall when they're falling to the ground by the hundreds, it can be easy to miss a few (or many) of them. The missed cherries end up sinking into the soil and leaving their seeds there. The seeds are very tiny (comparable to carrot seeds- maybe even smaller) so I guess must easily get carried by the wind, because they're not only in the bed where I grew them last year, they really are in every little tilled spot in the garden.

I created a brand new little garden bed this year for my ten year old (pics in my next post!), which was just lawn last fall, and *somehow* he has ground cherries growing there too! 

I feel like I've unleashed a ground cherry monster. Luckily they're yummy!

Early July Update

Well, it's been about a month since I've updated. Things are looking much different!
My tomatoes are kicking butt. I think these may be the largest tomato plants I've ever had this early in the season. They're already outgrowing their cages!

So green, happy and BIG!

 
Lots of tomatoes on all of them too.

Park Seed's Sweet Million

Park Seed's Whopper

They're doing so much better compared to last year's tomatoes. Last July most of the blossoms were falling off my plants and just a few little green tomatoes were hanging on for dear life. I was growing all heirlooms then, and promised myself I'd try some hardy hybrids this year. And woo - what a difference!  I also mixed Tomatotone organic fertilizer (love that stuff) in with my garden soil before planting, which I hadn't done last year. And for the first time I started every one of my tomato plants  from seed (inside in March). So proud of  myself!

I'm did a companion planting and have marigolds, eggplant and basil between the tomatoes. It's a little crowded, but I think I like it, and the plants seem happy.

Marigolds (yet to bloom) in the front, eggplant behind them, and basil behind the eggplant

The basil is getting tall and seems to love the partial shade. The eggplant (also started from seed) is also getting larger. I totally recommend Great Garden Companions by Sally Jean Cunningham. Awesome book for figuring out what plants you can tuck in where.

In other news, the ground cherry plants are growing:

ground cherry with a pepper next door

The zucchini plants are huge and are flowering.

savoy cabbage and nasturtiums tucked around the zucchini (and my foot!)

The beet and carrot area is looking slightly scraggly, partially because I just thinned the beets. Dudes, beet greens are da bomb. Sooo good. I ended up with a giant bowl large enough to feed our family of four a big salad for two nights. They taste like spinach with a hint of beet.

Beets and Carrots

I also have bush beans and a few cucumber plants. Need to put up a trellis for the cukes.

Bush beans (with zucchini in the background)

baby cukes forming

We have a bumper crop of grapes growing.

Our crazy overgrown not properly trellised grapes

It was hard to capture, but the vines are *covered* in little grapes. It's a grape bonanza!

The strawberries are starting to flower again.

 

It hasn't been a totally successful year though. The garlic fizzled out. All the plants were small, and the soft necks fell over (From what I've read I believe that means they're ready to harvest. My first year growing soft necks). Even the hard necks looked small and dying, so I pulled up all the garlic to make way for new plantings.

Mini garlic drying. We'll still use it.

The peas were also not as great as they usually are. The rabbit ate about half of the plants when they were small, and so I didn't have enough for the peas to trellis on each other. They fell over and are now getting yellow and crispy.

Fallen over peas on the left

There used to be garlic in the middle and right sides of the above bed. Today I prepared the center empty section to plant more bush beans (love me some bush beans!). I'll do that in the next few days. I transplanted some volunteer ground cherries on the right. Apparently ground cherries literally grow like weeds. I have volunteers all over my garden from all the dropped seeds last season . It's hard to tell from the picture, but the transplants are looking droopy. I moved them there on Saturday and right after, they looked like they were goners. They've been perking up a little each day so I think they'll make it.

I'll pull the peas in a few days and plant lots of carrots and beets - maybe a few radishes. And at the far end of the pea bed some pumpkin seedlings are popping up (hopefully they'll have enough time to make actual pumpkins!).

I think that's it for now!