What's going on in the garden

 

Some of the raspberries are finally starting to come ripe - although I'll be lucky if I get to them before the critters do!

I have a guest on my sage

Some of my broccoli is ready to eat.  Unfortunately one plant doesn't give enough for a whole meal.  I guess I'll just have to eat this all by myself.  Darn!

And finally, I am starting to see tomatoes!

Look Ma! No BER!

 
I may actually get tomato sauce this year!  I don't have enough plants to have big, all-at-once harvests, so these guys are being cored, seeded, and frozen as they come ripe a few at a time.  The other plus side to this method is that by the time I have enough tomatoes for a big batch of sauce, it'll probably be September, and (one would hope) much cooler!

Sadly, I may have to give up on the pickles.  It's taken three years, but I can no longer avoid the fact that trying to plant cucumbers as a succession crop in New England is doomed to failure.  Powdery mildew will hit at roughly the same time every year, no matter what I do to prevent or stop it.  If I want pickles, I really need to get my cucumbers into the ground as early as possible.  It's the only way I'll get a good crop before the cucumbers start to look like this:

I'll try again next year!

Finally getting some good garden news!

My cucumbers are doing brilliantly!  I picked two today and had them for lunch, along with some of my grape tomatoes.  I'm trying to anticipate when enough of them will be big enough for pickling.  At the moment I'm aiming for sometime between Friday and Tuesday (understanding that Weekends Don't Count.  I can't get anything done on weekends) for making the first batch of pickles!

My Roma tomatoes are finally starting to turn red - and so far the blossom-end rot is still at a manageable level!  I plan on turning these into tomato sauce, so I'm going to experiment with freezing them as they come ripe so that I'll have enough for a big batch I can put up.  I figure it's mostly the texture that suffers when you refrigerate/freeze tomatoes, and I'm going to be cooking them anyway, so it may not really make much difference in the long run.  Anyone who's tried this and has an opinion please chime in!

In other better news, the Garden Beetle season seems to mostly be over, and my herbs are trying hard to stage a valiant comeback!  Of my nine purple basil plants I think I truly lost three of them.  The other six look much like this one, so I may yet get pink, basil-scented vinegar this year!