Earliest Zucchini Ever!

I may have grown the earliest zucchini ever this year! I noticed a couple days ago that one of my Costata Romanesco plants was already producing female flowers. Several of the fruits are already fairly large and would be completely acceptable as baby zukes. Most years, I'm just now getting my squashes planted, so I can't believe I already have fruit. It must be the black plastic that's helping heat the soil.

I still haven't staked any of my tomatoes (I'm not sure what I'm waiting for), but I did finally built a little trellis for my mexican sour gherkins. It looks really cute, but I'm hoping I don't poke my eye out on it at some point.

My beans and soybeans are up and growing already. Every year I'm astonished by how fast beans germinate. You'd think I would get used to it after a while.

My corn is up a running too. This is the first time I've ever grown corn, so hopefully it will be successful. I planted two different types of sweet corn and two types of popcorn. I saw a baby rabbit investigating this corner of the garden the other day, so I might have to put up more rabbit fencing.

My salad greens and brassicas are getting out of control! We've finally had spring-like weather the last couple weeks, so the leafy greens are pretty happy. We've been eating salad with nearly every meal, and I haven't even made a dent into our supplies.

This was the first year I intentionally grew mesclun. I usually just pick different greens and mix them together, but I thought I'd try some pre-mixed mesclun this time around. 

Well-Stocked Pantry

Okay, so maybe all the items in my pseudo-pantry aren't edible, but these great handmade shelves (put in by a previous owner under the basement staircase) are coming in handy for storing all my canned goods this summer.

I've managed to fill six shelves so far (with another batch of tomato sauce on the way). 

I've really been cranking out the tomato sauce this year. I'm on my fifth batch!

In addition to tomato sauce (bottom right), I also tried dilly beans (bottom left) and tomatillo salsa (top right) this summer. After gifting many jars of my humongous batch of apricot jam (top left), I'm finally getting down to a more reasonable supply.

In addition to the apricot jam, I also made blackberry apricot (bottom left), black raspberry (top right, my favorite), and sweet cherry jelly (top left). The six jars on the right side of the bottom shelf are leftovers from the 2009 and 2010. They still taste just fine, so I'm not too worried about their advancing age.

Around the Garden

The edamame and green beans came up nicely. They don't look quite as drunken as my snow peas.

I hope these strawberries survive until ripe. I've been seeing some nipped-off stems here and there. Rabbits? Squirrels? Feral Cats?

My white peonies look great right now. As soon as it rains hard, they will flop over though.

My fava beans are looking good. I can see tiny flower buds forming.

Finally! Some harvestable spinach!