June 4 update

June has begun but it feels like it has been here for about a month now with the weather. It's been seriously hot and dry and that has not been kind to the garden. The okra produced very little before it quit which is unusual. My tomatoes are kind of sputtering along but still producing some smaller ones. I am sure the plants won't last much longer.

We have 6 watermelons on the vines. Two of the smaller ones shriveled up. Now if I can just find a fool proof way of telling if they are ripe. Sometimes I get impatient and try one only to find out it needed another week or two (or 3?) before it was ripe.

I have a pineapple that I thought was going to die after the freezing December we had. Looks like I might get something out of it. I used to grow about 30 at a time before I had a fence put up. As soon at one would begin to ripen some critter would eat the ripe part out of it at night. I worked in a produce department at the local grocery and would save the tops when we cut them for customers. They are easy to grow and really good if you can keep the animals away from them as they ripen.

My Myers lemon tree is just over 2 years old and it looks like I might get a lemon this year. It was so full of blooms this spring but they never produced. The bees sure loved it though. I think the tree just needs to mature more.

The cantaloupe from the compost pile has 3 fruit on it and they look to be ripening up real nice.

The butternut squash is also looking good.

My blueberries seem to be doing okay. Two beds each one Sharp Blue and one Emerald variety. In the first bed the Sharp Blue has a lot of leaves that have turned a bit brown. The third bed has a variety called Sunshine Blue.

Sharp Blue on the left. Emerald on the right.

Sunshine Blue.

My grocery store potato experiment had some okay results. Here is the massive crop LOL!!

Ready to harvest.

Lets see what we got!!

The red leaf lettuce in the container is finally getting larger. I think it probably needs a little shade in the summer heat.

And finally the peppers and eggplant. We've had several eggplant so far that I bake sliced and breaded and use it instead of pasta with spaghetti sauce. The peppers are also doing fine though the heat is a little hard on them.

That's all for now.