sweet sweet fruit (and veggies!)

Looky, looky
a turnip!

Tonight I just could not resist any longer.

I pulled out a turnip
I did pick the one that was crowded by a few smaller ones.
In the interest of making a meal of these later, I chose the larger of the crowd.

Here among some of the beans that were ready tonight,
but I ran out of evening daylight to pick anymore.

It has been HOT here, bloody HOT!
Too bloody hot to be outside gardening when the sun is up!
(I have been avoiding too much work in the garden...but I did mow the entire lawn today while small napped and medium was at VBS.) - Thank you Jesus for self-propelled mowers, sunscreen and lots of water!

So, in the cool of this evening I spent my precious time moving around my plants on the deck.
How funny is it that I can move my tomato, bean and pepper plants around?!
That is but one of the beauties of the Earthboxes!
I also have WAY larger plants than what is growing in the raised beds.
The Eggplant in a self watering container is 4 times larger than the one in the raised bed.
The Brandywines have about the same ratio of growth.

Next year, I would like to double my earthbox efforts.
The tomatoes, beans, corn, peppers and eggplants can have the self watering pots.
I am surprised at how often I have to fill them.

I would also like to see my raised beds holding...
Carrots, radishes, turnips and beets
Yes, root crops.
I think they do better in the dirt.

I am not yet sure about lettuce or spinach. I want to test all that out again in the fall... we had so much rain that I really did not get but one good growth spurt of lettuces and that was only the leaf lettuce - the tom thumb heads just didn't produce. The spinach did Nada. sigh. I think it was just too wet and then got hot and humid too quick this year. I would like to try lettuce in a self watering, but only the butter lettuce. The leaf lettuce is a mute point there, since it doesn't need the little plastic cover, I think a rubbermaid container is about the same thing.

Did I mention how stinkin HUGE the cherry tomatoes are? I got a free packet of "Aunt Ruby's German Cherry" and they are almost as big as the brandywines... not cherry at all. sigh. I wanted LOTS of cherry to try and smoke and dehydrate them. That's okay, I still might get a bumper crop of cherry from the lone Bi-Color cherry plant. It is growing up fabulously too, even with the late start... remember, medium knocked the whole tray down and I had to start them over! Now it is just as big as all the others.