Adopt a Crop update: Some progress

I will admit that some of my motivation for crop updating today was to get that hideous cake photo off the top of the blog, but also, I'm very excited by the small but sturdy progress my lone cucumber seedling is making.

Important thing #1: He's still alive

Important thing #2: He is not at all chewed

Important thing #3: He is putting out new leaves

Also, who knew he was a He? These things just happen.

Now, once we get beyond the "Hey, the cucumber is still alive!" part of the update, that pretty much does it for the cucumbers. With just two new leaves and no death to report, that sums it up.

BUT, we do have some good action going on in the rest of the garden AND I did harvest my first Ronde de Italia squash yesterday WOO!


Now, when I bought this squash plant I *really* wanted an eightball squash, but because I'm a tard and passed on it during my first stroll through the nursery, it was obviously gone when I went back for it.

Ugh. All these years of fighting off my impulse shopping urges has finally come back to bite me. I knew it! I'm going back to impulse shopping right away. It's the safe thing to do.

*Sigh*

Anyhoo, I settled for this Ronde de Italia variety since the fruits are small (1-4" across when ripe) and won't grow into speedbumps if we dare to leave town for a few days. Also, its tag promises some variety of compact shrubbing, so I also won't have to worry about elephant-sized leaves covering my house in an eery green shade.

I picked the #1 squash last night and plan to saute it up with some of the farmshare goods that came in the box yesterday and you know while I was out in the garden, I picked a handful of my own strawberries to make friends with the ones that came in the box. Now they are BFF in the fridge together waiting for me to chomp them down as a family.


I'm pretty excited to try out the great recipe ideas y'all left in the comments from the other day. Since Bubba is going to India for a few weeks, I'll have plenty of time to fuck up some recipes without having to explain to anyone why the house smells weird or what's this brown thing in my salad or whatever. Then, when he gets back, I can just be whipping up awesome roasted fennel and fava bean hummus like a crazy pro and won't he be impressed. Or potentially disgusted depending on how much he likes fennel and fava beans.

Hey - Fun New Thing Alert!

Our neighbors who are awesome gave me a surprise gift on Sunday: HUGE AWESOME TOMATO CAGES!

Yes, I was just out in the front, cutting back my bulbs all haphazard like dressed in my best I'm a Garden Psycho get-up, when they strolled over to see if I might be able to "please take these cages off their hands because OH they'll never ever use them."

Um, OK.

These beasts are WAY better than my shrimpy and mostly broken down cages from years of yore (seen already buried in the photo above) and these have big openings from which I can easily harvest many huge tomatoes (*hoping*). Which will be nice since last year my harvesting of tomatoes included bringing wire cutters from the garage to cut openings into the too-small gauge fencing I used. Whoopsy!

I just hope that these enormo cages inspire the tomatoes to grow fast because right now it looks pretty silly having these monoliths towering over teeny plants. Three sets of flowers and counting! And one tomato looks suspiciously fat, which is good news. So maybe I won't look like an optimistic moron for much longer.


And, for no other reason that I took photos of these guys looking really sexy this morning:

Hey! Look at this pretty lettuce!

and the hydrangeas that are budding!

and the one beet that's thriving-ish!

See, that was worth it.