Our weather in the past week has been a bit of a roller coaster.  For instance, on Monday the temperature was around 100 degrees F and today was 78 degrees F.  I think these ups and downs are going to have a negative effect on some of the plants.  I know that the really hot days made a few plants unhappy.

In spite of the weather changes, the garden is growing well.  We have a number of things that we are harvesting and eating right now.  In particular we have green and wax beans to pick just about every day.  We also have more chard then we can use, which is nice because I have been able to share quite a bit of it with my mom.

My daughter’s flowers are growing well, especially the snap dragons.

The pumpkin plants are over spilling their area and growing everywhere.  I don’t think they like the heat very much, and are starting to look fairly wilted.  Hopefully a few cooler days will bring them back to life.  I think I could get some pumpkins out of the plants right now if they died off.  However, I would prefer to allow the pumpkins to ripen on the vines.  Last year we had our pumpkins ripen towards the middle of July, so that is what I am aiming for this year.

I am thinking I will be able to pick some of the Desi Squash in the next couple of days.  They taste quite a bit like zucchini, but are round rather then long.  I do have to be careful not to let them sit to long, because they quickly go from good to tough and woody.

I think these plants seeds came from a packet that was marked as Desi Squash, unless I planted the wrong thing.  However, they are very different looking plants.  As you can see from the picture above the Desi Squash is bushy in nature.  They plants below are vines and want to trail up things.  I am wondering if they are some kind of melon.  I guess I will just have to be surprised at what we get.

We are getting many green and wax beans. I have been able to give quite a few to my parents, while still having enough for us to eat often.

The 3 apples on our Anna Apple tree are getting to be a good size.  I don’t know how long they take to grow and how large they will get.  I am having fun watching them grow though.

My 10 year old son’s garden bed is doing well.  I have been able to get quite a bit of chard from his bed, and a couple of carrots.  I probably picked the carrots to early, but they tasted really good.  Store bought carrots are not nearly as good as home grown.  His melon plants have gotten very large, and have started to put on melons.  He is excited about those, because he really likes melons.

Our 13 year old son’s garden bed is still doing well.  His flowers have done well, and have a number of beautiful blooms on them.  His corn has ripened and we picked it today.  I will have a few pictures of that later.

I picked the rest of the beets and the corn from my 8 year old’s garden bed.

I hadn’t realized that our corn had gotten ripe until last night.  I was probably a couple days late picking the corn, but it was really hot this weekend so I didn’t get around to checking.  Unfortunately, most of the ears had a caterpillar in them.  The caterpillars hadn’t had much of a chance to eat the corn yet, so I squish them and then cut of the chewed up parts of corn.  The unaffected parts look really good and I can’t wait to eat them.

I have harvested some things throughout the week, but today I did a pretty good sized harvest.  My parents are watching the oldest two boys tonight, so I wanted to give them some things.  I was able to pick the corn, arugula, chard, beans and mustard leaves.

Tonight for dinner Lynn made pancit using all vegetables from our garden.  There was garlic, red and orange carrots, green and wax beans, and kohlrabi.  I get a feeling of accomplishment from growing enough plants to do a whole dinner.

-Joshua