The weather has been so dry lately! The soil in the garden is pulling away from the edges near the cinderblocks. I am trying to get back in the habit of being outside in it every day so that the plants don’t dry up.
The garden 
Del’s tomatoes 
Tomatillos 
This Roma is coming back, and blooming! I may get a second fruiting from it! 
The Celebrity I tried to save has blight on all the leaves now. I think I’ll have to pull it this week. 
This view shows how many tomatoes I’ve pulled out 
The carrots still haven’t sprouted :-( 
Squash 
Gosh, this looks pretty
This oxheart tomato fruit was looking some kind of terrible yesterday. Gah! The skin on the tomatoes were wrinkly and shriveled but the plant seemed okay (no wilted leaves). I took a picture and sent it to my gardening friend. He didn’t know what it was, either. Googling said it was cat-facing. No. That is definitely NOT what a cat-faced tomato looks like. I have heard oxhearts are a little finicky, so I watered heavily, and today (Tuesday) it’s looking much better. I haven’t seen a tomato shrivel and the plump up like this before. Mother Nature has made the tomato so resilient! I’m always learning something new in the garden.
Wrinkled oxheart tomato 
This is the same tomato about 16 hours after heavy watering
Here are some pictures of the beans. They are still very small, but since I removed the shade cloth, they are getting very green. I think I’ll avoid using the shade cloth next year unless I can really ensure that it shades just the tomatoes.
Wind-blown bean trellis 
Here are some more random pictures of tomatoes. All of my “first” tomatoes on every plant have blossom end rot. I have got to be more regular with watering, I think.
Paste tomato with blossom end rot 
Blossom end rot 
Blushing Cherokee Purple
I took pictures of the zephyr squash today and yesterday to compare:
Yesterday 
Today – there’s a little bit more yellow at the top
Here are today and yesterday’s pictures of some San Marzanos. These are about 16 hours apart. It’s amazing how fast tomatoes ripen this time of year.
Today 
Yesterday
We bought a compost holding thing — a GeoBin — from Amazon a week or so ago. We set it up a few days ago, and the wind blew it over. I got some landscape fabric pins that I had in the shed and pinned it down. Eventually we will have it full enough that it won’t blow over, but I’m hopeful this will keep it from blowing away again in the meantime.
Sydney is very excited that I’m going “green”. I bought a regular tumble-style composted, too, but I understand it’s tricky to assemble. I will probably wait until Jared gets home to assemble it.
I’ve managed to kill one of the clematis plants, but it was one of the sick ones from Lowe’s, so I don’t feel too badly about it. The other are doing pretty well. Some are two feet tall:
And yesterday’s harvest:
