Good Eatin'

Good job! Tasty looking, too!

"Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration."
~ Lou Erickson

any onions going?

definitely looks like some sauce ready to be cooked

next year i'm going to plant some onions and zucchini

That 'rogue' cantaloupe is hilarious. Is it ready to be picked, do you think? It looks kinda big in the photo.

i don't know, the skin when up close is a little green still, the ones the neighbour grows and sells are more yellow

i'm gonna give it a few more days, hoping to go north in a week or so, i'd like to take it when we go to visit tai chi (along with some tomatoes, peppers and swiss chard)

a couple of years ago we had rogue pumpkins

Lucky! A couple of years ago canned pumpkin was hard to find on the grocery shelves. Libby's said there was no surplus due to weather issues or something. I usually make pumpkin bread in the Fall, plus the pies at T'giving. I remember grumbling at paying almost double when I could find it.

Looks great, Djjd! A lot of gardeners in the Albuquerque area are complaining about the poor crop of tomatoes, cucumbers and other garden veggies this year. Master gardeners say it is because of the extremely hot and arid weather we've had. We normally have 3.5 to 4 inches of rain per year and we haven't had even an inch yet this year. They're saying we didn't have enough rain the last couple of years to help wash the salts out of the soil and our soils now have too high a concentration of salts.

Our own tomatoes didn't produce well this year either. They grew like crazy, blossomed and formed fruit but then didn't do much after that. The fruit either dropped off or just never ripened. The cucumbers and squash grew like crazy but only formed half a dozen each of the fruits after busting out all over with blossoms.

Earlier in the year we had a bumper crop of peas.

we had some really hot days that stressed the tomatoes a bit, but i keep them pruned up, basically run the main stem and one sucker, and i also prune the sets, cherry like tomatoes down to about 8 fruit and the beefsteak & roma to about 4-5 fruit

Wow very nice. I really wanted to do the same thing; I have a small side yard that would have been perfect for a vegetable garden I just never had the time to get it started.

jcboy, you're going to have a great opportunity to do some gardening when your partner's son moves in - kids are so much fun to work in the garden with - you just have to maintain a good sense of humour about their harvest plans

I had to give up the garden idea when I got the second dog. I sectioned off half of the back yard and the other side of the house belongs to them now

Adds, to Beth and didge, I'm a strong fan of raised beds for good eatin' stuff, and I figure many of us are. Go for it, JCboy and MM and kiddo.

we had to hav e water line replaced a few years ago, ordered a huge pile of dirt to top up the trench (how come the same dirt that came out of the trench never fills it up enough)

had a small mound left over, didn't know what to do with it, so i got some 2 x 12 x 12 boards and made a 6 x 12 raised bed around the mound, added some extra earth and mulch

there was a tarp on the ground underneath the pile, left it there, so few weeds grow and the moisture retention is pretty good

My cukes and maters are long gone. made some really good sauce and froze some. My step daughter will be visiting in another week or so, so I'll defrost it then.

getting another crop of green peppers.

GREAT job Didge, remember you doing the raised beds.

You've reaped the rewards of your labours - looks fanstastic. Are you gonna be doing soup recipies this year?

I could actually do it, just go to homedepot and buy another small fence with a gate but another reason why I decided it wasn’t a good idea was the fruit rats in St. Pete. My neighbor has a fruit tree and it attracts the rats. He’s always putting traps out for them. Plus I never had the time. Gardening and weeding here is never ending. I would never have the time to start a beautiful garden like that one.

You could do some growing inside tho - kids love to grow cress and a whole variety of herbs etc - and little fruit trees and such like - mind you, you've got a whole world about to open up to you Kids love to BAKE. Cakes, they love to bake and decorate cakes - butterfly cakes and so forth - and making fruit salads and whatnot.

My kiddo is 14 and LOVES to cook (thankfully)!

NIIIIIIICE! Looks awesome, deej. And good for you!

This is my first summer here in AB so I didn't know what would fly - or when - compared to BC, but I planted green beans (picked loads of those already), kale (still harvesting), red and green leaf lettuce (still harvesting), carrots (not ready yet), rhubarb (man, that's a diehard, for sure), onions (sweet and regular yellow, chives and leeks), loads of chili peppers (7 diff varieties), not to mention herbs (sage, oregano, thyme, rosemary, tarragon and basil)

I know nothing about fruit rats - egads. Can they be screened out somehow? Probably. (wonders, while wandering away to google)
I've a friend that deals with intense gopherdome, a giant pain. He lives near Lake Isabella in CA. Plants just about everything in some kind of cage system.