A pictorial garden tour

On Saturday we went to the garden to work for awhile and during that time I took a few photos. These were with my cellphone -- not the perfect camera for photos like these, but I think you can tell that the garden is coming along nicely, even with the lower resolution camera. I do seem to be having some issues with the blog spot photo entry software so I hope you can see the photos as I intended.

I am quite pleased with our garden so far this summer. We are beginning to get a few squash, cucumbers and even an almost ripe tomato. If the weather would just cool down a few degrees and we would get more rain, things would be perfect. Things really do look lush and green.

Our green beans are now running over the top of the poles and we are beginning to see blooms. Very pretty, I think.

We have recently fertilized and have been dusting with diotomaceous earth to prevent beetles from getting a stronghold.

The cucumbers are growing like crazy. They are responding to the really hot weather and I hope we get some rain soon because I hate to get thin cukes that balloon on one end because they suddenly get rain. I have already made a gallon of sour pickles and have had enough for salads and snacking.

The hot peppers have grown even more than I thought they would. We planted some cow horn peppers for my husband and I think they will grow quite tall. I don't have any experience with them -- until now.

We have a nice row of okra coming up, at left and the bok choy still looks pretty good. We do have another row of okra that is just planted but they haven't peeked through yet. The hot weather is really great for these okra plants. They love it. I don't think I have ever seen a plant that thrives so in hot weather. The only negative about okra is that deer really, really love it. Good thing they hate our electric fence. I am hoping for a good stand of okra in the next several weeks -- maybe even enough okra to harvest a bit.

It is a hard to see but the plants at the back are my spaghetti squash. I really love them. They are just putting on the second leaves at this point but should really shoot up and catch up with the other plants.

I think our corn and squash is really looking good. They would benefit from more rain but we will hopefully water them enough while waiting for rainfall.

The yellow squash plants are not as dark as the zucchini. I think zucchini is a really attractive plant and so far so good on the squash. We are looking for bugs all the time and things look good right now.

This is one of the different squashes we planted. I don't remember exactly which one it is. I know we will know soon. I love the coloring of the leaves. I think it is a kind of zucchini.

This should be our acorn squash. Acorns are one of my favorites, especially in the winter.

We planted a cherry tomato bed and it looks very good. We have red, black and purple.

I do like our tomatoes and peppers. We have a new staking system this year.

My husband found some six foot hardwood stakes with holes drilled in them on clearance at Tractor Supply. We tied wire at the top and bottom of the stakes that we put on the end of each bed and another stake in the center. We tied the strings to the bottom wire and then wound the string around the tomato trip and tied the other end of the string around the wire at the top.

The indeterminate tomatoes were staked this way. The determinate varieties are mostly caged.

Greenhouses stake their tomatoes largely this way and so far I really like it. You must pinch off the suckers so that there are not too many branches. Seems sturdy enough and I am hoping it works well to keep the tomatoes off the ground.

And the last thing would be our cantaloupes and watermelons. The cantaloupes are very small plants and the watermelon have just been planted so I can only show you dirt where they are.

Pretty good. I am just praying for rain.