Early July in the Kitchen Garden

Now that July has arrived, I have finally finished planting the Summer crops in the Kitchen Garden - I think. It has been so very hot the last two weeks, but for the most part, the plants have come through with flying colors.

I spent some time Sunday re-building my onion raised bed. My watering had eroded one side badly. The onion bulbs were getting quite exposed and most of the water was just running off the bed. So I built up the right side once again and leveled off the top. The onions are much more stable now and my watering is more effective and much less wasteful.

Here's a nice "Candy" onion. I should be able to start harvesting them in the next month.

And here is a "Cortland" yellow storage onion. I am hoping that they will start to size up now that they are receiving more water.

My garlic has done terrific since it was planted last Fall. With the hot weather, I think I am going to harvest the "Chesnook Red" plants this week. They are already half brown and fading fast.

The large "Russian Red" plants are still 2/3 green so I will wait another week or so until I dig them up to cure.

I pulled out the lettuce a few days ago and amended the raised bed in which it was planted. Then I set in two "Bush Delicata" plants. I didn't cover them with remay and I am paying the price. It looks like the finches have eaten out the growing tip on one of them already. Sigh. Now I need to decide what to do in its place.

My two little "Butternut" squash have finally settled in and are putting out some nice, green new leaves. This week's forecast calls for temperatures in the 80's, so that should be a little kinder to them as they get established.

My two "Howden" pumpkins are really taking off. One has already toppled over and is starting to crawl and the other isn't far behind.

The three "Snow Crown" cauliflower plants appear to be surviving this heat wave. All three have white crowns of various sizes.

I am a cauliflower rookie, so I need to read up on them a bit more and see when I should harvest the crown. While they aren't perfect, I am pretty pleased with my first attempt at growing this finicky vegetable.

Both of my pepper plants appear to be on the way to a great growing year. They certainly should be loving the  hot weather. Pictured above is my "Gypsy" Sweet Pepper.

I now have two nice size "Gypsy" Peppers maturing on the plant.

I am growing a "Padron" pepper plant for the first time. It too is doing really well and is covered with blooms and nice, new branching foliage.

This is the very first "Padron" pepper on the plant. It just started to grow a few days ago. Hopefully it is the first of many.

The mixed variety Morning Glory plants have almost reached the top of their tower and are starting to put on a really pretty display each morning. Once again, even with thinning, I have a good mix of pink and purple blooms.

I put the second tier of the towers on my last three tomato plants this past week. I did it in the nix of time. As you can see, two of them are already half way up the second tower.

The original three plants that I put in the garden have almost reached the top of the second tier and it's only early July! And my "Heavenly Blue" Morning Glory, planted in between the tomatoes, has reached the top of its support and is now scrambling over the tomato cages. So far, it hasn't yet bloomed.

A truss of "Mountain Magic".

The  young "Matthew" tomatoes definitely have a plum shape.

The "Esterina" is starting to set fruit.

"Galina" has always been a reliable producer for me and my co-workers love it.

Here are two green "Matina". All of my tomato plants have now set fruit except for my "Mexico" plant.

After I removed my empty Potato grow bag this past weekend, I planted two of the "Hale's Best Jumbo" Muskmelon that I started from seed. They look pretty small right now, but its still early Summer and the weather has been very melon friendly this year.

My three "Blacktail Mountain" watermelon plants are really starting to take off. All three plants developed their first runner this week, so their growth should really explode. I am trying to be vigilant and fertilize them every other day.

I certainly have just about every size of beet possible in my two rows of  "Golden" beets that I planted. You would never know that they were all started from seed at the same time. I do have some fairly large ones now, so I need to harvest a few this next week and give them a try.

The "Gold Coin" cipollini onions continue to look good. Since this is a new-to-me variety, I am not quite sure how they should be progressing. But since they don't grow up into a huge globe onion, I think they are right on track. Also growing under the remay tent, in the kitchen garden annex, is a row of "Cabernet" red onions. They aren't too happy with their cramped growing conditions and are still pretty small at this point in the season.