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The Winter Garden is Going

12/19/2022

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It has gotten cold by Memphis standards, and by the end of this week, it will get cold by every one else's standards (low of 4 degrees).  With the cold obviously all the usual plants have gone dormant for the winter.
Because of the expected cold weather I will need to harvest the broccoli and cauliflower. Both can survive down to about 26 degrees or so, but this will be much colder. I wish they could stay in the ground longer and develop a little more. I will harvest the head and leave the rest of the plant in case it survives.
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Also the regrowth of the lettuce has lasted much longer than I expected. The cold weather will kill it too, so I will be harvesting it.
The kale is about ready for its first serious harvest. This is a video we shot about a month ago with Extension Agent Celeste Scott where she talks about some cold weather vegetables. I ate the leaf she picked in the video and it was good, but it had only barely frozen by that point. I am excited to try out some several-times-frozen kale. It should be even better.
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The garlic came up and we had 100% germination. It is about 6" high. From my experience it will not do much through the winter, but in the spring it will grow larger and be ready in about June.
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It's Fall... Let's Plant!

12/2/2022

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Most people think you can't plant in the fall in the vegetable garden, but they are wrong. Garlic makes a great through-the-winter crop. You want to plant it long enough before the ground freezes to let it establish, but it will bee a small bit of green in your garden through the harshest winters. It will stay small until the thaw, but will then grow to its mature size around June. Here gardener Peter Richards shows how to plant garlic.
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Cold Weather Brings the End of the Summer Garden

11/28/2022

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Well, we had several nights of very cold temperatures and this time we did not try to protect the garden. It froze and all the warm season plants died.
Before the freeze I went through and picked everything that was growing. That included a lot of green tomatoes.
In the south there is a reason for fried green tomatoes. The tomatoes slow down in the summer because of the heat. They start setting fruit when it cools back down again. The only problem is that it does not have time to ripen. So, fried green tomatoes. I am not from the south, but I know some people who are, and they snapped up all the green tomatoes.

This is what the pre-freeze harvest looked like:
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I picked:
Tomatoes (6.13 lbs) consisting of:
   48 Green tomatoes
     6 Yellow or red tomatoes
   16 Green cherry tomatoes
     2 Red cherry tomatoes
13 Eggplant (3.34 lbs)
  3 Cucumbers (0.73 lbs)
  1 Romaine (0.11 lbs)
The three remaining basil plants (1.03 lbs)

It All Looks so Sad Now, But There are Still Plants Growing

I always have mixed feelings about the first freeze. On the one had I am sad to see the garden go, but on the other I am glad it is done so I don't have to do as much work.
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Through all the dead there are still quite a few plants growing. We have two lettuce plants that we harvested a month or so ago that are coming back. We also have two kale plants that should grow all through the winter. Finally, we have broccoli and cauliflower plants that are starting head, so that should be coming soon.
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Lettuce
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Kale
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Broccoli and Cauliflower
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Broccoli and cauliflower heading
The garden looks much better after cleaning out all the frozen plants. It kind of reminds me of how it looked in the spring when it was just getting going.
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We Are Still Growing After a Freeze

11/4/2022

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The biggest news since the last post is the snap of cold weather we had. A couple weeks ago it froze pretty hard here in Memphis. It was only three days later than the earliest recorded freeze here.  This is realy early so we decided to try to cover the garden and try to protect it from the 27 degree weather. We had three days with lows of 31, 27, and 32. We wrapped up the square foot garden in canvas drop cloths and plastic. We also made sure the ground inside was wet. The garden survived with the only damage being the eggplant which was bent down under the weight of the cover. I think the very warm ground and the water helped us out. We have not had any temperatures close to freezing since then so we are still growing. Here is a video of how we covered it up:
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Sweet Potato Harvest

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Even though we covered up the garden to protect it, it is time to harvest the sweet potatoes. We got six sweet potatoes from the two squares we planted. This does not seem like much except three of them were the largest sweet potatoes I have ever seen by far. The six potatoes weighed in at 8.4 lbs and the longest one was 10 inches long and weighed 2.3 lbs just by itself. Many vegetables don't taste good when they get large, but these potatoes were very good, at least the portion we have been able to eat so far. I was worried that the harvest would not be very good because the landscapers cut them back so severely in July, but they pulled though and did great.

Lettuce is out already

I have also harvested most of the lettuce. The oakleaf lettuce was showing signs of bolting so I harvested it and then a few days ago the Romain was starting to bolt so I harvested it too. The Romaine had not gone bitter yet so that is good.
The oakleaf lettuce is starting to regrow where it was cut off so we may get another harvest out of it which would be nice. I left two Romain plants that were smaller so they will have more time to mature.
I picked .58 lbs of oakleaf and 1.2 lbs of Romain.
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Mid-harvest on the Romaine. You can see the bolted plants still in the ground
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Oakleaf lettuce plants regrowing (left). Remains of the Romaine on the right. Maybe they will regrow too.

Rogue Carrot

I pulled all the carrots a long time ago, but there was one I missed. I found it and pulled it. So add one carrot to the total.
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Other Harvests

We have harvested a number of other vegetables since the last post:
3 more eggplant (1.51 lbs)
1 cantaloupe (.71lbs)
1 watermelon (2.1 lbs)
2 cucumbers (1.02 lbs)
15 tomatoes: 8 full size, 7 cherry (1.84 lbs)

There are still quite a few tomatoes on the vine and we are expecting several nights of hard freeze this weekend. This will probably be the end of the tomatoes and other cold sensitive plants.
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It is Getting Cooler

9/16/2022

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It seems that fall has arrived (fingers crossed). The weather has gone from highs in the upper 80s and humid to highs in the 70s and dry. The plants seem to be enjoying the change of weather and the ones that don't like the realy hot weather are getting back to producing again.

Basil Harvest

He had Dr. Lelia Kelly, a retired Mississippi State Extension Specialist, on Family Plot and she showed us an easy way to dry basil at the end of the season. You just cut off the whole plant and hang it up. Here is the video of what she did
When she was done we went and trimmed the other three plants and total we got 0.654 lbs of basil. I am amazed at how much we have harvested off of just four plants in this growing season. So far we have harvested 2.71 labs of basil, which is more than a typical family would use in a year.

Other Harvesting

During this time we have also picked 10 more cucumbers for another 5.34 lbs. The cucumbers are still producing and we will have more again soon.
We also harvested three more eggplant for 1.22 lbs. There are four more growing on the plant.
We got only 2 cherry tomatoes for a measly 0.02 lbs. This is because in the heat the large tomatoes stopped blooming. The good news here is with the cooler weather there are lots of large tomatoes growing on those plants again.
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More eggplant that will be ready soon

Other Happenings

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The fall lettuce patch
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Cauliflower and broccoli
Here are the other things going on that are not harvest related.
The fall vegetables are growing well. The romaine lettuce has about doubled in size so far. The oak leaf lettuce started bigger so it has not grown as much relative to how it started. The cauliflower and broccoli are doing well.
The cantaloupe has another fruit on it and the watermelon has one too.
The sweet potato vines have recovered from being mowed off by the landscapers and are doing well. It is trying to invade the lettuce patch.
One piece of bad news, the potatoes are dead. They did not grow well and I think it might be because of the heat.
Also, if you remember last time I talked about how I needed to pull out some pepper plants because they had wilt. Well with the empty space I planted another cauliflower next to the ones from the previous week.
I always enjoy the transition from summer gardening into fall. I realy like to grow the cool season vegetables. If everything goes well we should have lots of them soon.
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More Harvesting and the Fall Crops are In

9/16/2022

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Well the hot weather has continued, but the last week has let up some. The harvesting has been going well. The tomatoes have almost come to a stop except the cherry tomatoes (22 harvested over the last few weeks for .34lbs). This is expected in the heat of summer when they don't set any new fruit. In the last week or so the large tomatoes are starting to set fruit again so hopefully we'll get a fall harvest.
The pepper plants have also been producing. I have picked 11 peppers for 1.83 lbs in the last few weeks. Unfortunately, two of the three pepper plants had wilt so I had to pull them out. There is no cure for wilt and it is passed from one plant to another by feeding insects so hopefully the last plant does not succumb.
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9 Peppers in one harvest
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This plant has wilt so it has to come out.
Also in the last couple of weeks I have harvested 2 cantaloupes (1.9 lbs and 2.8lbs)  and a watermelon (5.7lbs). They were good to eat. There are a few more small cantaloupes, but I do not see any more watermelons growing.
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The cucumbers are producing well. I have picked 16 more for 12.06 lbs. They seem to be coming in all shapes and sizes. The plants don't seem to understand what is their trellis and are climbing all over the tomato cages and other plants in the garden. In most of the other pictures of the garden today you will see cucumber leaves. I also harvested two more eggplant for .96 lbs.
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One harvest of seven cucumbers

Planting Fall Crops

I planted the fall crops this week. I planted 4 cauliflower and 2 broccoli in the space that was taken by the totally non-productive green beans. They are planted one plant per square foot. I also planted lettuce in the two squares that were used by the onions earlier this year. Those are planted 4 per square. I planted 6 romaine and two oak leaf lettuce plants. I also planted a kale plant in a square that was supposed to have some potatoes, but they never came up. I planted all of these before I decided to take out the peppers because of wilt so I have two more squares that I will plant in. I have 2 cauliflower and one kale plant left over so I will plant them in the newly available squares.
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Broccoli and cauliflower transplants
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Lettuce and kale
You may remember that I started some cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce from seed, but they were eaten by bugs when I tried to harden them off, so they were not going to work. Luckily I was able to find replacements at the store.

I also sprayed the plants with Bt to keep them from getting chewed on. The bugs have had all year to multiply and they are looking for some late season snacking.
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The square foot garden as of September 16.
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The Good and the Bad

8/25/2022

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So, I am going to start with the bad news. We had two watermelons growing great....... until the landscapers got a little too excited with their weed eater. They cut one of the watermelons off the vine. So now we are down to one watermelon, but it is growing well and is getting close to the size of a basketball.  I am going to count the cut off watermelon in the total harvested on the right.
Also, while the landscapers were at it, they mowed down all the leaves from the sweet potato vines that were trailing into the space between our beds. The sweet potatoes will probably do just fine because they grow so aggressively. They are now growing the other way and trying to take over the garden.
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One last piece of bad news. Two cantaloupes ripened, but before I picked them some animals picked and ate them for me. They left a little piece to tell me they were there. They must have been good. Just so you know I did eat the cantaloupe I picked a few weeks ago. it was good.
More bad news. The first part of the summer was hot and dry, but now it has turned into a regular Mid-South summer with hot and humid conditions. The tomatoes have been suffering from blight, quite a bit of it. I have been spraying, but it is hard when it rains every other day. The only tomato plant still setting flowers is the cherry tomato. Hopefully the others will recover when the weather cools down and we can pick another round of large tomatoes. 
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Good News

Okay, enough of the bad news. On to the good news. 
The peppers are producing, and I have picked 7 of them weighing 1.2lbs. There are still many small peppers that are growing on the plants so we should expect many more. 
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The seedlings of the fall vegetables are growing well. After putting them under a grow light for a couple weeks I moved them outside under a shade cloth. Now I am having to defend them from the bugs. They are hungry. I'll be planting them in the next few weeks for a fall crop.
The potatoes are up and growing and I have hilled them two times now. From the six I planted I have three good plants. Here you can get a sneak peak at the short segment I did on hilling potatoes.
The cucumbers are producing, and I did not even notice one of the growing cucumbers until it was almost too large. So far I have picked 2: one large and one small. There are many more on the vines so there should be quite a few.
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More baby cucumbers on their way
We got another squash. In previous years the squash plants have all been killed by squash vine borer by this point. I wonder if having so many plants so close together makes it hard for the borer adults to find the squash plant. Also, I am not sure why they are so small. It may be because they are often the shade of taller plants or it could be that they have more competition than usual from the roots of other plants.
Also, one squash bug has found the squash. I found a set of eggs on a leaf. i tore off that part of the leaf and threw it away.
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To round it out I have also picked another 2 eggplants (0.8lbs), 13 full size and 32 cherry tomatoes (2.8lbs), and a little basil (0.05lbs)
A week or so ago I noticed that the plants were starting to turn a little yellow. Most of a time in a raised bed this is because the nitrogen has washed out of the soil. I put about a tablespoon of nitrogen around each plant (not the sweep potatoes, they will grow only foliage with nitrogen fertilizer) and in the week since they have turned back to a happy, healthy green. 
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Some New Vegetables to Harvest

8/8/2022

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So we have two new kinds of vegetables to harvest this week. First the eggplant exploded and only about a week after first noticing small fruit, two of them were ready to harvest. In fact, the fruit was heavy enough that it pulled the plant over so I had to stand it back up and stake it.  We should be getting more eggplant over the next few weeks as it does not look like it is slowing down.
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The eggplant tipped over
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Tied up eggplant
Also we picked cantaloupe for the first time. We got two melons, but unfortunately one of them got over ripe and had to go to the compost pile. They go from un-ripe to too ripe very fast in the heat. Luckily, the larger one was not over-ripe and it weighs in at almost two and a half pounds. There are a few more growing so we should get some more.
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We also picked a whole bunch more basil (1.5 lbs) and some tomatoes (1 large, 7 cherry). Overall it was a big harvest and makes a nice picture:
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Other Things

The other plants are doing well. The cucumbers have started growing rapidly up the trellis that was installed last week. The bell peppers are still growing and he largest ones are about 2-3 inches long now. Also, there are two watermelons growing, one of each variety. I have not mentioned the sweet potatoes in awhile. They are continuing to grow well and are vining all over the place as they tend to do.
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Potatoes, Onions, and Fall Crops

7/29/2022

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It's hard to believe it is late July and time to be seriously thinking about fall crops. I started the broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and lettuce this week. I started them indoors so they could get a good start in the cooler weather of inside before I move them out later in the year. There realy is not much to see here. Just a tray of dirt. I did label them with strips of milk cartons so I would know which plants were which.
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Potatoes

I also put the potatoes in the ground. Confession to make, these were potatoes that I purchased at the store. You are not supposed to do that because of disease. Unfortunately there were no local nurseries that had any fall seed potatoes. One I called even said they can't get them anymore. I had to go to several grocery stores to find a bag of potatoes that had some good eyes on them. I cut the eyeing potatoes up and put them on a plate to scab over.
To plant them I dug a hole for each that was about 10 inches deep. Then put a piece of potato in and only filled the hole about half way. Potatoes need to be hilled several times and the first hilling will be filling the hole the rest of the way. As a side note, there were lots of roots in the soil as I was digging the holes. I tried to not break the larger roots. Overall I planted three squares of potatoes with two plants per square. With potatoes you can plant 1,2, or 4 plants per square. The fewer the plants the larger the potatoes. I thought 2 was a good compromise.
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Potatoes ready to plant
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In the hole. look at all the roots.
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Covered up.

Cucumber Trellis

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I have needed to put in a trellis for the cucumbers for awhile, but I have not been able to figure out the best way to do it. The trellis for the peas was okay, but it did not work as well as I would have liked and all the peas ended up sliding their twine to one side. I decided to go with cattle panel like on the tomatoes. We also have cucumbers growing up cattle panel in the main garden and it has worked very well. I attached the panel with wire. It had to be mounted under the t-posts because the tomatoes were already on top of the middle t-post.

Harvest

To plant the potatoes I pulled the rest of the carrots in those squares. I have been pulling them as they grow. I pulled about 16 carrots. most were a good size, but there were a few realy small ones that I did not even keep long enough to take a picture of. After removing the tops they weighed 0.94 lbs. That about wraps up the carrots for the year. There are a few more growing around the garden where the odd seed fell. If any of them turn out to be good I will update the numbers.
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I picked the first squash of the year. it was a little small, but ready. It weighed about a quarter pound.
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The onions have cured and were ready to be cleaned. There was one rotten onion so I threw that out. So out of 18 planted we have 16 usable onions weighing 4.77 lbs. Some have fat necks and will need to be used soon. (I have already eaten one.) The rest can store for awhile until I am ready to use them.
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Onions before cleaning.
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After cleaning. There were several double bulbs that I broke apart to clean.
The tomatoes are still going. I picked another another 24 tomatoes (15 full size and 9 cherry) for 3.52 lbs.

Other Garden News

A couple of other things to mention about the garden:

We have a couple of watermelons starting to grow. They are about the size of a quarter now.

There are 4 or 5 fruits starting to grow on the egg plant. They are about the size of a quarter too.

The peppers are finally starting to set fruit. We have probably a dozen small peppers on the three plants.

I pulled out four of the six bean squares. They were not doing anything. The two squares I left had flowers still on the plants so I left them.

I have doubled the water. While the ground was slightly moist I figured it could be wetter. The peppers were looking ever-so-slightly wilted in the afternoon and the watermelon is starting to fruit and it needs water. I had been running a single watering cycle for one hour at 5AM. I added another hour at 1PM so the plants would get another drink in the heat of the day.
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Eggplant
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Little Watermelons
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Beans before I pulled them
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We have Onions

7/22/2022

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It has been several weeks since I last posted about the garden. Nothing realy has been going on other than the plants growing. But now we have some updates.

The Onions are Pulled and Curing 

We have pulled the onions. The tops died back most of the way so it was time for them to come out. We got 17 onions out of the 18 we planted. Pretty good. We laid them out to dry and cure on the cement pad that is under the big satellite dish. It stays shaded most of the day. In a few more days they will be ready to clean and use or store. Most of the bulbs have the narrow neck that is good for storage. If they have wide necks you should use them soon because they will rot first. As a side note, if you put nitrogen fertilizer on them after they start to bulb they will tend to get wide necks and won't store.
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Other Harvesting

I pulled more carrots (11 carrots for 0.94 lbs.). Early next week the potatoes are going in the ground for a fall harvest. The rest of the carrots will come out then.

We have also picked another 16 full size and 16 cherry tomatoes for 3.42 lbs.
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The Cucumbers are Up and Growing

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The cucumbers are growing well. I need to build the trellis for them. The twine I used for the peas did not survive pulling up the peas. I may use another piece of cattle panel like I used for the tomatoes. It is strong and lets the cucumbers hang down so they are easy to find as they grow.

Whats up With Some of the Other Plants

The beans were a bust. I don't know exactly why. From the 54 plants we planted we got about 15 beans. Disappointing. The Japanese beetles have been enjoying them, but that should not have affected the beans that much.
The peppers have not set fruit yet. We have some flowers, but no fruit. We planted pepper plants from the same tray in the in-ground garden and they are producing just fine.

The eggplant is starting to flower so maybe we will have some soon.

The cantaloupe has a fruit on it that is getting close to ripe.

The watermelon is growing, but no fruit yet. I am mad at the landscapers. They have weed-eated the ends of the watermelon vines. Overall the landscapers have done more damage to out gardens this year than all other causes combined. Grrrr!
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Beans
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Peppers
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Eggplant
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Cantaloupe
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    Square Foot Garden

    This year we are trying out square foot gardening. We will be growing a 4x8 garden and seeing what happens and finding out how much we can grow in such a small space.

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    Here is what is growing right now in the Garden:
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    Our Harvest So Far
    5.50 lb Radishes (32 plants)
    1.09 lb Spinach
    0.70 lb Turnip Greens
    0.58 lb Turnip Roots
    1.71 lb Mustard Greens
    3.71 lb Peas
    1.12 lb Green Lettuce
    0.83 lb Cauliflower (1 head)
    ​3.74 lb Basil
    3.96 lb Carrots (46)
    0.11 lb Green Beans (bust)
    24.17 lb Tomatoes (225)
    4.77 lb Onions (16)
    0.53 lb Summer Squash (2)
    8.69 lb Eggplant (25)
    9.40 lb Cantaloupe (4)
    9.90 lb Watermelon (3)
    21.19lb Cucumbers (34)
    3.17 lb Peppers (19)
    0.58 lb Oak Leaf Lettuce
    1.20 lb Romaine Lettuce
    8.45 lb Sweet Potato (6)
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