9′ 8″ … this is how tall my daughter’s sunflower now is. It was about 2 inches tall when we bought it at the Lane County Extension plant sale in the spring for a quarter, and now it towers over my fence at over 10 feet off the ground. (The top of the garden bed it is in is about 18-24 inches from the ground.) I’m not sure what happens at this point — will it make seeds, fall over (it is sort of leaning), or just keep getting bigger? The one next to it is quite a bit smaller and not yet flowering.

Click on any image for a larger view and slideshow.

While trying to stake up my fallen Lemon Boy tomato plant, I dropped one of the wood sticks and broke the stem on a very large, nearly ripe tomato. (As you can imagine, I was pretty mad because I have been waiting a LONG TIME to get anything ripe out there.) I cursed at myself and took the tomato inside to see if anything was salvageable about it. As it turns out, it was perfectly ripe and delicious, and not a Stupice Tomato at all (as the tag near the base had said). I had been waiting for it to turn red, but it was actually a Cherokee Purple Tomato! My son kept trying to mix up the tags on the plants when they were in containers, and I guess he succeeded in switching the tags for the Cherokee Purple Tomato I had bought at the farmer’s market from Lost Creek Farm and the Stupice Tomato that I had bought at the store. I thought the tomatoes were a little large and oddly shaped for Stupice, but it has been an odd year for tomato growing. (My Lemon Boy Tomatoes, for example, are more heart-shaped than round this year.) So today I got to enjoy my first large, ripe tomato off the vine for the 2010 season — that is, I enjoyed it until my son walked in the kitchen and busted me, thereby forcing me to share the second half of it.

Click on any image to bring up the slideshow of larger images.

I have never grown these before, but they sounded fun. Ground cherries are a type of tomatillo that is more sweet than tart. I’m having a lot of fun with the tomatillos because they have an automatic shutoff on the ripening process, thereby taking out the guesswork. Essentially, when the husk becomes brown and the fruit falls, it is done! (No picking needed!) The first fruits to fall are so tiny though, but delicious to snack on. I wonder if I will get anything bigger than this before the summer is over … it has been a very odd, bad year for gardening.

Click on either image to see the slideshow of the larger versions.

I’m now hitting the end of all the cooler-weather produce, and warmer weather is (supposedly) here for good now. I’m taking the last of my spring produce and freezing it before it bolts in the warmer weather. The technique is simple — boil some water with a bit of salt in it, toss your cleaned veggies in, and take out after a minute with a spider or slotted spoon. Some people then dunk theirs in an ice bath and drain, but I just arrange on a dish plate and place into my freezer. I leave them in there until they have "dried," and then I put them into a Food Saver bag, vacuum and seal. This technique works well with most cooler-weather veggies, such as broccoli, cauliflower, beets and peas.

Click on the image for a larger view of my "Amazing Cauliflower," freshly blanched and such a bright green color.

This is the first year I have grown cauliflower, but I love eating it (especially with onion dip HA). I had no idea what to get but this was called Amazing Cauliflower so I couldn’t go wrong … right? The first head matured and was cut today, and it really is quite amazing. The taste is hard to describe. It’s almost like the store-bought stuff is a bit bitter and under-ripe, but this was nearly sweet and softer in flavor.

Click on any pic on this page for the larger-view gallery.

The garden is hanging in there, despite all the rain. At least the forecast for this week alternates sun and rain, so it should be able to do okay in that. (And I don’t have to water!) The cooler-weather crops like radishes, broccoli, cauliflower and parsley are loving this late spring. Some of the more hot-weather fare is hurting a tiny bit, like melons, cukes and green beans, but overall they are all holding on and waiting out the weather.

So I have two "members" in my little CSA now who pick up weekly boxes. It’s helping to fund the garden for us to eat, which sort of helps me to mentally justify the expense of it all. (If you think about it, a small addition to the garden is allowing me to have enough extra to make this happen — but the weather then adds additional stress to the whole thing by not cooperating!) I posted an ad on Craigslist and two nice women responded. This was what this week’s box looked like — see the tags if you want to know the names of all these things and click on the picture for a larger image.

I guess if I have gone to this sale two years in a row, it’s now an annual event for me. It’s definitely a not-miss! If you are in the Eugene area, they will continue the sale tomorrow from 10 am to 4 pm again. As for me, I don’t know which is the best part about the sale.

• Is it benefiting the cause of horticultural therapy "for individuals who are victims of domestic violence, abuse and trauma, at-risk youth, as well as individuals facing mental and physical challenges"?
• Is it getting an amazing deal on some fantastic plants? (Even if I swear I don’t have room for one more thing, there’s always something that will catch my eye.)
• Is it picking a volunteer’s brain about all the plants I’m just curious about?
• Is it seeing my son clap about backyard chickens?
• Or is it watching my son become totally mesmerized with a woman playing the sweetest songs on a ukulele?

In any case, see the flyer here and the pictures I have included below. As always, click on a thumbnail to get a larger size.

The sun finally peeked through for a few hours on Friday evening, and I swear the plants took it as an opportunity to double in size. Those vile mosquitoes also took it as a reason to break out of hibernation — after only an hour of sun, one landed on my arm (and was immediately smashed).

Click on thumbnails for a larger picture.

The one odd point is my purple tomatillo. I’m not sure what happened to it … it’s like the rain turned it into a vining plant instead of an upright bush. I feel like I’m watching some sort of heirloom evolution in action, because several other tomatoes seem to be doing it to a lesser degree. I pulled it out of the main bed because it was taking up too much space, so it will have a new home with the ground cherries on the other side of the garden.

Another week, more cold weather. I think the purple leaves in the tomatillos are a symptom of the cold, as I had the same problem with my tomato seedlings earlier in the season. (Colder temperatures prevent tomatoes from taking up phosphorus from the soil, so if you see the leaves or stems start to turn purple — warm those puppies up!) My cucumbers are slow-growing and looking sad, and the newer leaves on many plants have a weird yellow coloration on them (as seen on the lemon basil below). "They" say warmer weather is heading our way by the end of this week, so I am crossing my fingers that I can recover the season. I can’t believe we went from freakishly warm, spring-like weather in late winter to a cold, rainy start to the growing season. I will be researching season extenders like row covers and cold frames by fall to see if I can get back some of the time I am losing now.

There is a guy with a fantastic front yard garden a few blocks from us, and we were wondering why his area was still laying at rest until just yesterday. Maybe he knew more than I did!

The late cool weather is extending the season for my spring crops though, like broccoli, cauliflower, peas, radishes and beets. The downside is that some things did not make it — for example, I am headed to Territorial Seed for a refund on a Sentinel Apple today because one of my columnar apples is fine but the other got too cold on the store lot and it didn’t recover to get leaves after planting. At least they are being very nice about it!

Click on any image to see the full gallery.

The plants can’t seem to figure out what month it is, thanks to the weather. One day it’s hot and one of my broccoli plants bolted into pretty flowers, the next it’s cool and the radishes and cauliflower are happy but the melons keeled over and died.

Click on any picture to see the gallery.