Here are my no till Venezuelan Corn plants.

Two years ago this was a steep hillside covered in weeds, and wild onions. I smothered them out with cardboard and have mulched continuously with leaves and straw. The soil was or is rocks and clay, but it finally looked plantable, so I pulled the leaves aside and planted the corn and covered them up again with leaves. I have been watering them a little with manure tea.

Blanching my Blue Solaise Leeks.

I mixed up my Mammoth Pot leeks and Blue Solaise Leeks in the hot bed and I am just now figuring out which is which. I put these 12 inch drainage tiles on to blanch them just this morning. I've never done this before.

Garden update for June 22nd

I have a few peppers coming along.

I have two Moon and Stars Watermelon plants, which as I understand it will become very large plants covering lots of ground.

These are my Florida Speckled Lima Beans. As soon as the soil temperature hit 70 degrees they began to sprout and grow. Next year I will sprout them in the hot bed. I think I could gain a couple of weeks with them. They had some slugs on them this morning so I blasted them with Diatomaceous Earth.

I have about 70 different Cole plants potted up that I plan to transplant in a few days. I realized that taking them directly from the hot bed to the garden was causing a lot of shock. So I put these in little Dixie cups. As soon as they show a little growth in they shall go. I have some Broccoli Romanesco that I am quite interested in.

This picture shows some of my Venezuelan corn in with my Sugar Baby and Yellow Doll Watermelons.

It looks like the tomatoes have hit the 5 foot mark. They are growing an inch and a half per day. I am watering them daily.

The different varieties are all inter-planted so it will be a surprise when they ripen. It looks like the herbicide damage is spreading uphill. I think maybe the root systems are inter twined and some bad stuff is spreading. I hope it stops. The first green tomatoes showed up about June 10th.

I took the Celery collars off this morning and they go back on tomorrow. So they got a little sun today.

Ground Cherry plant. Physalis Pruinosa

I love to eat Ground Cherries. In Colombia they sell them on the street and in the grocery stores. They call them Uchuva. I never knew what they were, but one day I figured them out and am growing them in my garden. I bought the seeds on Ebay, and are an unnamed variety. After they had been planted a few days wood chucks (evil demons) ate them to the ground, three succumbed but eight have survived and are finally making a comeback. I saw the first flower today, and am kind of excited. They taste almost like little oranges. I don't know too much about them, but am watering them daily and have them mulched as well.

I am seed saving with these lettuces.

These lettuces survived the winter so I am letting them cross breed and produce some kind of a hybrid. They were both leaf lettuces and one was red tinged. I am looking forward to planting them this fall and see what I end up with, They are quite slow growing and don't seem to be in any hurry to do their thing.

Seed Saving Swiss Chard

I had one Swiss Chard plant survive the winter, and I have let it go to seed so I can harvest it. I have developed an addiction to this plant. I've already cut this years plants twice and it is almost ready again. It is a great plant to have in the garden, it grows back as long as you just cut the leaves. The insects and heat don't bother it and it will produce into November.

I am growing one plant of Rampicante Zucchini this year.

I am interested in this variety of zucchini because it is supposed to be prolific, resistant to the wilt that kills regular zucchini, can also be used for winter squash, and has very unusual shapes. Note the curly cue tendril. They grow normal until they latch on to something then they twist and put spring like tension on the plant against the wind to hold it in place. The spring like form would give it some give as well. Quite ingeniously devised by our maker.

A tomato progress picture.

It has been really dry and we have basically not had a real rain for 5 weeks. I read somewhere that the man that set the world record for maximum fruit production watered his plants daily. So that is what I have been doing. He said they should grow about 1 to 1.5 inches per day, and I think mine are. They are somewhere between 3 and 3.5 feet tall and filling in the crw cages nicely. His record was some where around 300 lbs per plant. If they continue their growth they should hit eight feet some time in August. If necessary I plan on putting another 5 foot cage on top of the eight footers to keep the plants going. Last year I never watered once and all the plants over grew the eight foot cages. I was picking really nice tomatoes into October. So my experiment is to see what happens with growth and fruit production if they are never stressed or limited with water availability. I have a 3 inch drainage tube with holes buried underneath the plants and in two or three minutes with the hose the watering is done. The varietals this year are Purple Cherokee, Radiator Charlies Mortgage Lifter, Neve's Azorean,Big Zac, Opalka,Gold medal, and Brandywine Sudduth strain.

Last week I put collars on my celery to blanch and force it to grow taller.

The variety I am growing is Verde Pascal. I really have very little experience growing celery, but it seems to be going well. I am using rosin paper that has not been dyed. A week ago I used for the most part 9x9 squares and a string to hold them on. Also the little bamboo sticks help them grow straight. Some plants had a little rabbit setback but seem to be recovering. I am watering them every day and they are mulched as well, they grew three inches this week. Yesterday on the taller ones I placed 12 inch collars on them. When you take them off you can pluck off yellowed leaves and side shoots. On the really hot days I am covering them with old bed sheets for shade. I grew them from seed and the were started in early March.

I harvested my Grey Griselle French Shallots today.

I pulled 67 bunches of these shallots today. Some of them had as many as 20 shallots per bunch. So I guess I have hundreds and hundreds of theses bulbs.  I am going to try to braid them like garlic and then hang them up to dry. This is my second season growing them. I bought about 20 bulbs a few years ago and now i have all of these. I planted them last fall and they were falling down and cooking in the upper 80 degree temps we've been having. It might rain tonight and it seemed like a step backwards for them to get wet and soggy.