With a little help from Emily and Kevin, I cleaned up the garden today. It had been ignored for far too long. The weeds were taking over, and some of the plants had been attacked by bugs.

We pulled all of the weeds by hand, cut off the old ugly leaves from the zucchini (and pulled up a couple of the plants that were too far gone), cut off the worst leaves from the green beans, and planted some flowers in the “dead zone.”

Some before and after photos:

Hopefully now, with a little babying, the plants will perk up.

For future reference, it takes exactly 5 of my little cucumbers, and a half-recipe of the brine to make 2 quarts of pickles.

These went straight to the refrigerator. We love refrigerator pickles. So easy to make (not that canning is difficult, it’s just more steps and more dishes!), and the cukes stay crispy.

The only problem is waiting for them to be ready to eat! It takes a minimum of a week (2 for them to really absorb the flavor).

I checked the cucumber plants last night, and there are a lot of babies plumping up! Next pickling day, I’ll make a batch that isn’t spicy for the kids. I also want to try making some sweet pickles.

Added to this week’s grocery list: Vinegar, garlic, and dill. My little dill plants are growing, but not fast enough to be used for the pickles yet!

Plus one more that was picked yesterday.

I’m not sure how many jars I’ll get out of these 5, maybe 2 quart jars (not packed tightly). We’ll make refrigerator pickles, using this recipe I used last year.

I’ll make some spicy for the adults, and not as spicy for the kids. Some zucchini will likely be added to the mix as well!

Or “Future Pickles,” since that is what they will end up being!

My 3 cucumber plants are also parthenocarpic like the zucchini (doesn’t require pollination to set fruit). The plants had lots of female flowers with little baby cucumbers, but once the flowers fell off, the babies didn’t seem to be growing any larger. I was afraid that they weren’t going to produce.

But ignore them for 2 days, and this is what you see!

There are 5-6 cukes fattening up on the vines now. And hopefully more every day.

I’ll be using the garlic that I harvested for those pickles:

These were the only 2 remaining plants from the 9 cloves we planted last fall. You’re supposed to harvest in the fall, but the leaves were already turning brown. And I was just dying to see whether they grew into bulbs anyway! They sure did. They’re very small, but if they’d been able to grow the rest of the season, I think they’d have reached a nice size. The bulbs were very deep in the soil (clay) too. I think the freezing & thawing, plus being planted where I hadn’t loosened the soil much led to that.

We’ll try again this fall! I’d like to try growing some hard and softneck varieties this time.

The zucchini plants have gone from this:

to this:

to this:

to our first harvest!

Many more will be ready to harvest this week. We’ll be having zucchini cake for the girls’ birthday party this weekend!

I thought my plants were everbearers last year…because that’s what they did! They produced berries all spring & summer.

But this year, they seem to be about done.

The new plants don’t seem to be producing flowers any longer either (I picked the flowers off so that they wouldn’t fruit yet – they need to get better established first).

But who knows what may happen later? Maybe they’ll have another period of fruiting? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Here’s a rough plan of my garden at the moment:

It’s packed pretty tightly!

None of the cucumber seeds came up in the bottom left square. I may transplant one or two of the cukes that did sprout in the upper square over to it.

Or I may plant something else there (more green beans would be the likely choice).

There are also marigolds (grown from seeds from the plants I had last year) all around the garden, and a few extras around the tomatoes. They potentially ward off bugs and critters, but I really just like the color they provide!

I had to resow some green beans today. The “Fresh Pick” variety didn’t sprout very well at all, and the other two varieties had some bare spots in their rows. I got them planted this evening while dinner was cooking, and just my luck, it started raining about a half-hour ago! No going out to water for me.

The tomatoes grew a lot over the holiday weekend. They’ve got their first flower buds!

The onions are taking off too…much to my surprise! There are I think 17 onions out there (down from the 144 seeds I started). I will be more than thrilled if they grow big enough to store.

The peppers were looking a little sad from all the rain we got after they were first planted out. But since it was hot and dry for the past week or so, they’ve perked back up and are looking nice & green again.

We’ve been battling slugs and strawberry sap beetles eating our berries, but we’ve had a bigger harvest than last year as well! Next year we’ll be better prepared for them, and maybe we won’t lose as many berries to the bugs.

The basil is thriving since I planted it out last week. I will have to start harvesting leaves soon! Too bad there won’t be any tomatoes ready for awhile to have Caprese salad!

A couple of weekends ago, we pulled up some of the sod to expand the garden about 3 feet.

It’s about 19′ X 15′ now.

The area marked off in orange is a “no-till” spot. There’s parsley and garlic planted there. And the strawberry & onion patch is in the back on the right.

I had to mark off the areas in case my dad came while we were at work to till the garden. That didn’t happen – but finally will tonight! So planting will commence this weekend.

One of my Juliet tomato seeds grew twins!

The smaller twin will have to be sacrificed eventually.

But I’m thinking I may try to transplant it into another pot, since one of my Juliet seeds didn’t germinate. I don’t know if that will work, but it can’t hurt to try!

So, to make salsa, those tomatoes and onions are going to need some peppers, right?

Last year I just grew bell peppers. They are a staple in our house. My 9 plants did very well, producing plenty for us (we’re still eating them from the freezer!), and plenty for my co-worker and in-laws to take home too!

But I didn’t have any hot peppers in my garden. So this year we’ll have jalapenos too.

I started 9 seeds of each. Peppers like it hot (ha!), so I put them on my heating pad when I’m at home to help them germinate. It seemed to help, they finally sprouted after about 9 days.

All 9 of the bell peppers sprouted, although one looks like it might not make it. Only 8 of the jalapenos sprouted. That’s fine, I only plan to plant 3-4 of those myself anyway (I’m sure my dad will take my extras!).