Summer Sizzle

It's July and summer is here with a vengeance. We're looking at 100+ days for the next couple of weeks. It was 104 yesterday. Even though it's super hot, I decided to start some more basil. I can at least trial the different kinds. There are 10 different kinds here; Lemon, Lime, Licorice, Cinnamon, Blue Spice (vanilla), Genovese, Red Genovese "Red Freddy", Corsican, Persian, and Thai "Siam Queen". I started these on 6-19 but I found that shade cloth lying on the baby starts will kill them... so I reseeded as needed yesterday. I also started a flat of lettuce "Summer blend." I'm hoping to get a late summer crop out of them.

I took a bunch of shots of the garden around the solstice to mark the progress. Everything has grown enormously in the two weeks since then. The beans are happy here, and now they are covered in flowers.

Rick shows off how tall the tomatoes were back then.

If Rick were standing in the same place two weeks later, he'd be invisible! Notice the purple basil between the tomato plants. It made a lovely contrast.

Here's another good overview of the farm on the solstice.  And yes, it was a bit overcast.

These Blue Beauties are shaping up to be a big crop. While we've harvested a few tomatoes here and there, most are not quite ripe yet.

These are the first two Indigo Apples from my backyard. I picked them for dinner when my folks came to visit.

This isn't the best pic, but here we are, enjoying a farm-fresh salad.

Of course we took them to the farm and showed off the chicks and the veggies.

Last Rock Band night was also Keith's birthday, so we all hoisted a glass in honor of Scrod O'Day.

The gourds are looking good. I know... I need more gourds because? I only planted a few of the dancing gourds, and some of the giant "bushel basket" ones.

This might look like an unassuming plot of dirt, but really it shows a truckload of compost that Batch brought us. I think I'll plant summer alfalfa in this spot, and let the gourds ramble over it.

We got this huge pizza pepper. The ones I grew last year in the backyard never got this big!

This is just to remind myself that the beans I planted on 6-17 were up by 6-25.

The Cardinal basil is coloring up beautifully. It also has a very licorice taste.

We are continuing to work on the cabinet doors. This is the latest plan. The posters will look nice displayed like this, but I just hope it isn't too hard to get them on straight and flawlessly.

And our final pic is one terribly obscene zucchini!