Just a quick update to report some progress. No pictures this time.

The “wall of peas” is gone.  I tore them all out today.  80% of the plants were dead, and the ones that were still hanging on were all about 30% dead themselves.  I’m thinking I will skip the peas next year.  They weren’t as big a hit with the family as I thought they would be.  I didn’t get as much produce from them as I thought I would, so next year we’ll try to think of something else.

One tomato has turned bright orange, and I checked it today and it’s all eaten from the inside out.  Altogether, though, there must be between 12 and 18 dozen tomatoes waiting to ripen.  The largest plant has over two dozen alone.

The sweet corn is coming in really well.  We will have over a dozen ears very soon.  Lauren comes home from camp tomorrow, so maybe tomorrow night we will pick the largest ones and cook them up.

Most of the potatoes are still doing okay, I think.  I have notices quite a few spuds poking up this week.  They’re only about silver-dollar size, so they have quite a ways to go yet but despite how dried up the plants are, I noticed fresh green growth on most of them this week.  Maybe the rain let up just in time.  Here’s hoping.

I pulled a carrot last week to see how they were coming and it was about 3 inches long, and maybe half-inch diameter.  Still a long ways to go there.

Beets are pretty much ready to pick I think.  I’ll pull one this weekend and see how far along they are.

We’ve been getting a pretty steady crop of yellow squash and zucchini.  Not a whole lot, but enough to keep us busy.  The cook’s starting to get a bit behind.

One pumpkin to report about 6″ diameter.  There’s a couple more, but they’re only maybe an inch or two.

The lettuce has pretty much slowed to a halt.  I need to get out there and trim one last time, but the growing has really slowed.  I can’t complain, though, it has kept us stocked all summer long.  Sandwiches have been a real treat thus far.

This post verbalizes my own reasons for switching from AVGfree to Avast several years ago.  Although Avast also provides a commercial version on their website, the free version is easy to find and download, and once you have it installed, does not bug you to upgrade or try to trick you into upgrading by saying that your free version is expiring.

I guess I’m still not ready to accept “free” software from Microsoft

http://www.computercourage.com/2010/02/11/how-to-replace-avg-free-antivirus-with-microsoft-security-essentials/

All this rain is killing my potatoes.  I dug two of them up the other day and they were complete mush.  The water pools in that corner of the garden.  I haven’t looked at the beets yet, but they’re probably in trouble too.  This fall I will bring in some more top soil to try to raise the whole garden a couple inches and get the water to drain away from it.

I’m excited about the cucumbers!  I’ve got a half dozen of them about 3-4 inches long, and a bunch more just starting.

I’ve already harvested four zucchini and one yellow squash.  They were delicious!  There are a lot more coming in.

Tomatoes are getting big, but not starting to turn color yet.

Lauren’s corn is getting really tall and starting to form ears.

Here I am trying to bring my friends over from Facebook so that they will (hopefully) leave comments on the blog, and what?  Comments were broken.  It was a malformed URL on the comment form which led to a 404 “Page Not Found” error when you hit the “Submit” button.

Kudos to the spammer who actually took the time and effort to manually modify the page source, enter the captcha and submit.  Your dedication to your trade is commendable!  If only your trade wasn’t so despicable.

That’s actually what led me to discover the problem.  I noticed the spam comment, then went in to figure out how he could have bypassed the captcha, and then realized my page was broke.

Apologies to anyone who actually tried to leave a real comment (anyone?)  Rest assured it is fixed now, so let the comments flow…

…

Anyone?

*crickets chirping loudly off-stage*

I know, I know.  ”Post something worth commenting on garden dork“.  :)

The 7′ of swiss chard has been producing very well.  I probably get 3 dozen leaves per week.  Beans and peas took me by surprise yesterday.  I wasn’t watching them very closely and now found about a dozen beans and a dozen pea pods ready for picking.  Plenty of flowers on the cucumbers now, so hopefully that will amount to something too.

My dad and I took two tree stumps out of my yard last weekend so Connor and I put the sawdust/chips around the plants this past week.  It looks real nice, but there wasn’t quite enough to cover everything.

I staked the pea trellis today to make it a little more sturdy.  It was getting pretty heavy and blowing all over the place in the wind.  Note to self:  planting a row of peas and a row of pea pods right next to each other and letting them climb the same trellis is a bad idea.  You can’t tell which pods are pods and which ones will be peas.  I tagged all of the pod plants today with a little string so I can tell the difference.  Next year if I plant both again I will put the pods at one end of the trellis and the peas at the other.

That’s all for now.  I’ll get some more pictures up soon.