Early summer vegetable progression

Although my original plan for this blog was to grow and discuss vegetables, most of my posts in the last year or two have been about flowers.  

This post is going to be all about vegetables.  (And berries.)

I grew some long sweet peppers from seed I collected from a grocery store pepper.  They're nice and long, good sized, but haven't yet colored up.  They should mature as red peppers.  I have a feeling they're going to fall short of the store bought ones in quality because we have been in such a dry spell for so long.  I've watered the garden well twice during this long heat spell, but I think that still won't be enough for nice thick-walled peppers.

I also planted some chilis, jalapeños and short sweet peppers.  All are fruiting, and all are still green.

Jalpeño peppers

Thankfully, even with the incredible heat we've been having, I do have some tomatoes that set fruit.  I've read tomatoes will only ripen at temperatures between 50° and 80° F, so these may take a very long time to get to harvest.

'German Johnson'

My pink celery didn't grow any larger stalks than all my previous green celery, but like the green ones, it has a nice strong celery flavor.  I've let it flower, and I'll try and collect the seed for future planting.

Still no fruits on the cucumber plants, but they're flowering nicely and climbing the makeshift trellis I created out of pliable forsythia limbs early in the year.

'Marketmore' cucumber

I plant okra every other year when the farmland abutting my garden is sown in corn.  (The alternate years it's in soybeans which attract hordes of Japanese beetles, and they also infest okra.)  I direct sow both the okra and cucumber seeds, and while it's recommended to soak okra seeds overnight before planting, I don't bother.  I just keep the soil from drying out until they sprout, and I haven't had any trouble.

This year's variety is 'Carmine Splendor'.  I recently harvested a half-dozen pods, so they'll be coming on strong now.  

I've grown several varieties over the years, and the red ones are my favorite.  They're always tender, with a lovely size and shape. Plus, they're pretty plants.  All varieties have been harvestable by the first week of July.  'Jing Orange' was a tall variety, and this year and last, I planted a short variety, 'Carmine Splendor'.  Tall is nice for the fact that you don't have to bend over to harvest, but they got very large, taking up a lot of space and resulting in a lot of plant material to clear after the season was over.  I prefer this compact variety.

'Carmine Splendor'

I had a couple of varieties of cabbage selected to grow this year, but failed to get the seed, so I just started what I had left over from last year: red 'Omero' and green 'Primo Vantage'.

The 'Omero' didn't grow or produce well last year, and I thought maybe I had just transplanted them too early or too densely.  I corrected for that this year, but they're behaving pretty much the same way.

You can see the difference in the varieties in the following pictures:

 

Green 'Primo Vantage' and red 'Omero' cabbages

'Omero'

'Primo Vantage'

Winter killed one of my three raspberry varieties: 'Latham Red'.  The other two, 'Glencoe' and 'Fall Gold' survived, but certainly aren't flourishing.  A few 'Glencoe' recently ripened and were tasty, but they were very small and shattered when picked.  I think I recall them doing the same last year.  'Fall Gold' hasn't yet set any fruit.

My 'Navajo' blackberry bushes started out beautifully, and then one day after I got back from a week away, I went out and found much of it broken down.  I don't if there was a microburst storm event, because there apparently was a storm while I was away, but I suspect raccoons.  They do so much damage.  Nevertheless, there are a good many berries on the plants, and four of them have ripened.  They were delicious.

I don't know when we'll ever pass out of this heat, hovering around 90° every day; I just hope August isn't even hotter.  I'm not going to count on it.