garden update

Last night Georg and I took a stroll around the vegetable garden. Overall it's looking really good! Much better than last year. I think this is due to a couple of factors: first, mulching around the beds made it much easier to walk around them, which means we're much more likely to do the basic maintenance. Second, the drip irrigation that Georg put in. I guess it really is true that a deep soak a couple times a week is better for the plants than a quick shot from the hose every day.

Here's the plant roundup, in order from most successful to least:

• Tomatoes. They are exploding. Much better fruit production than last year. The Early Girl is the heaviest producer so far, but the Better Boy have better flavor in my opinion. Early Girl wasn't that much earlier, and I think next year I'll skip it in favor of either another Better Boy, or something else. The Sweet 100 are just starting to produce, and have tons of unripe fruit on the vine. This is our third or fourth year growing tomatoes and the cherries always do best through the hot part of summer. We have only 2 heirlooms this year -- Cherokee Purple and Green Zebra Stripe -- and both have fruit on the vine but nothing ripe yet. We've had very bad luck with heirlooms in the past, and I'm waiting to see if this year is better.

• Sugar snap peas: an early spring vegetable, they were done and pulled out a long time ago. But man, they were good! Pick them small and they're amazing. Almost a different vegetable from the ones you get in the store. My only regret is that we didn't plant twice as many.

• Zucchini: were producing like mad a few weeks ago, pretty much done now. I thought they were supposed to keep producing for longer. This may be because we lost track and let a few zucchini get super huge? Maybe it's like basil, where you're done once you let it flower. In any case, the zucchini are mainly producing squash bugs now, and I think I'm going to pull them out. The smaller one at least.

• Poblano peppers: We got a few peppers early, then the plants put their energy into growing big, big, big. Now they have tons of flowers, and it looks like we'll be lousy with peppers in late summer. The only bummer is that these aren't the least bit spicy. I don't like really hot chilis, but poblanos should have at least a little zing to them. I guess that's what we get for buying seedlings from Home Depot. Next time I'll grow them from seed again.

• Spinach: Another early spring vegetable, they bolted as soon as it got hot. While it was still cool we got many meals out of a few plants. I'm going to plant them again in the fall.

• Eggplant: We planted them on a lark and what do you know, the eggplant turned out great. The skinny Japanese kind, that aren't as bitter as the big rounded ones. They don't seem like big producers, just a few eggplants per plant.

• Onions: They're smaller than I had hoped, but have a nice flavor. Next year maybe we should harvest them early and use them as spring onions. Those were really really good.

• Too soon to tell: potatoes, melons, asparagus (maybe next year!)