June 2008: First fruits

Sun gold cherry tomatoes on the vine . . .

. . . and then, in the hand:


Here are some regular-sized tomatoes ripening. . .

An orchid pepper . . .

Some small poblano peppers . . .

A sweet pepper (I can't remember the exact variety -- maybe it was a Gypsy) . . .

A couple bell peppers . . .

Of all the plants, I'd say the corn was like the garden mascot -- it typified the tradeoffs that came with our garden last year. Because of the lack of rain, the plants required a lot of watering to produce a meager measure fruit . . . but what fruit they did produce was very good.

See what I mean:

Up close . . . the kernels are fat, and very sweet/flavorful, but few and far between. I read that inconsistent kernel development is often due to insufficient water.

A few slightly larger cobs, along w/ some carrots I picked to see if they were getting big enough. (The answer was no, in case you were wondering.)

Haricots verts . . .

Watermelon -- this was about the size of a ping pong; we had several of these, but only one matured to a big enough size to eat (I think I'll have a picture of that in a future post):

The cucumbers did fairly well -- they weren't too demanding, and I got a few cucumbers off of the plants . . .

Granted, this isn't the most attractive specimen, but here's an example of the cucumbers we harvested:

This one is a little more normal, and in case you're wondering, these Asian Suyo cucumbers are supposed to be this elongated . . .

If you look closely, you can see the cantaloupe -- with all the drought, it was on the ground for a couple months before it was big enough to pick. (See an upcoming post for the fruit after it was harvested.)