Nothing beats the taste of home grown veggies picked straight from the garden. Something I love to do, both grow and eat my own produce.

So whats going on in our veggie gardens?

Here is a nice sized tomato I picked today. Love those home grown tomatoes.


Here are some pictures of my tomato plant beds.

Beautiful tomatoes, Rita! I have just a couple green ones so far--nothing ripe.

I did get some beans from my Phaseolus vulgaris 'Trionfo Di Violetto':


I love this plant! The blooms are pretty, the pollinators love it, *and* I can pick beans off of it! What more could anybody want?

I also got a few strawberries:


No luck yet with pollination on my cuke plant or my watermelon plant. Well, it's my first year growing veggies/fruits!

Very nice!

Well, the more you grow veggies, the more you will want to grow them. I am growing cucumbers, pole beans, eggplants, peppers, zucchini as well as lots of tomatoes.

Sounds like you've got the makings of some really nice salads there!

Oh yes, always eating something from the garden here. And I just love to make fresh cucumber and tomato salads. Yumm, yumm, yummy!

@Newyorkrita I got a photo of my cuke plant this morning and wonder if you can offer me some guidance with it:



I've been told I need to hand-pollinate the plant, but (a) I have trouble figuring out which are 'male' and which are 'female' flowers, and (b) the one time I tried to do this I broke off the female flower! Any tips?? I know my DD would love at least one fresh cuke from this plant!

I've never grown cukes, but for pumpkins and squash which look the same: the male flowers come first, and they have a long skinny stem connecting the flower to the vine. The female flowers start blooming a few days later, and they have a swollen stem connecting the flower to the vine.

If you have bees, then why were you told that you need to hand-pollinate? Genuinely asking, as I don't know.

Not sure--just what I was told! Well, there are bees but I see them more in the Agastache than over by the cuke plant. Maybe I need to plant an Agastache right next to the cukes?

I have never had to pollinate cucumbers., In my opinion that is silly advice. There are always some bee type pollinatoirs that take care of it. Might be that early on you were just getting mostly male flowers so of course nothing was setting.

But yes, the male flowers have an empty stem. The female flowers have a tiny, tiny cucumber. You can easily see it but unless pollinated they don't develop.

Same thing with squash, pumpkins, melons and such.

thanks so much, Rita! I'll keep an eye on the flowers, and hopefully will see a tiny cuke growing soon!

glad we have some vegetable gardeners here!!

This was the second year we have not grown our own veggies. We had a nice garden but no one had time to take care of it . I used to grow the veggies for the birds, but now I am down to 3 birds, and both kids work away from the farm, so it became a real chore and we just quit. Our neighbor has a Farmers Market Stand and keeps us in veggies when we need them. We keep them in greens for their Christmas Store, so it works out really well. I miss grabbing a tomato from the garden when I need one, but most of the time we have plenty.

Has anyone tried growing melons? I tried that one year with pretty good success. Same with pumpkins, they are fun to grow...not fun to pick. The watermelons I am getting now are just not good. The weather has been so crazy that it has definitely affected their development and they are tasting like mush. They are just not getting ripe the way they should. Early this Spring they were good but they were not local melons. I have not had a good local melon all year. Corn is fantastic but melons. yuck.

Rita, your tomato gardens look fantastic....you have such well groomed gardens. You amaze me how you do it all yourself. Way to go girl.

My gardens really are not so well tended this year as there are some weeds! Usually not many but too busy this year with the dog who is new this winter and still full of puppy mischief.

I picked so much stuff to give away it looked like I was opening a farm stand when I had it all laid out.

7 bags of fresh tomatoes went to varies friends and neighbors. Also gave away a bunch of cucumbers and zucchini. I didn't take any pictures as I just wanted to get the stuff picked, sorted, bagged and delivered. On my, I feel like I have really done my good deads for the day.

@catmint20906, your cucumber plant got huge!

@newyorkrita, I think @catmint20906 was advised to hand pollinate if her cucumber plant turned out to be gynoecious (all female flowers), instead of the type that produces both male and female flowers (monoecious).

It looks to me like those are male flowers, which is good news, because that means yours isn't gynoecious! So the female flowers should be coming soon.

ssgardener said: @catmint20906, your cucumber plant got huge!
@newyorkrita, I think @catmint20906 was advised to hand pollinate if her cucumber plant turned out to be gynoecious (all female flowers), instead of the type that produces both male and female flowers (monoecious).

@ssgardener--nice thought but no!

Good to see you here, SSG! Hope all of your veggies are growing well! Did you plant a variety this year?

JB I have one watermelon plant growing and it's sprawling to a nice size now--but no signs of any fruit yet! I can totally understand with all the work involved on a farm--we always wish there was time for everything, but somehow there never is! So nice that you and your neighbor are able to trade like that.

Rita, your neighbors sound very lucky!

@catmint20906, no cucumber for me this year. I actually had the seeds all ready but accidentally got the package all wet and moldy. I do stuff like this allll the time in the garden! One of these days I'm going to step on a rake and hit my head on the handle, like they do in the cartoons.

I'm about to pull my hair out dealing with the other site. I can't edit my have/list for the swap post.

I think this cool stretch of weather is slowing down the tomatoes. The cherry tomatoes are fine but the larger ones (Purple Cherokee?) have no shade of pink at all.

I am picking so many ripe tomatoes I hardly know what to do with them.

My parents, too! They have bushels of tomatoes, but this one variety I have (which I can't remember) refuses to ripen.

Humm, strange.,

yummm, Rita, if you keep talking like that, you're going to have us all on your doorstep with our baskets ready!

Ooh, so sorry to hear that about your cucumber seeds, @SSGardener! Yeah, I know what you mean about the edit thing. I tried to edit mine and it all disappeared! :-o Had to reconstruct it again from my notes. That's a good theory about the tomatoes--I still have the same green one sitting on the vine doing nothing....