After having rain for what feels like every day for a month here in the Pittsburgh region, my raised bed gardens have literally exploded into a barely manageable Jungle of Eden.  Every year I say I will cut back on the amount of plants I shove into my raised beds.  Every year I can’t bring myself to NOT plant every seedling that I grow.  I desperately need to make some local gardening friends who will take my seedlings.

This is my raised bed garden on May 23rd.  All of these plants were grown from seed.

This is my raised bed on July 13th:

The wood contraption is to help support my tomato plants (trees).  Both Rugters and Al-Kuffa were supposed to be “dwarf” determinate plants, but they are huge.  Even my Marigold plants are like bushes.  I only have green tomatoes so far… hopefully they’ll turn red soon.  With determinate plants, they will most likely all ripen at the same time.  There will be a shit-ton of tomatoes as long as they don’t get some freaky fungus from all the rain.

 

 

I love purple beans because their bright color make them very easy to harvest.  Purple beans turn green when they are cooked.  Oooooh soooo many magical beans…

My carrots are getting a bit smothered by my tomatoes, but this happened in my garden last year, and they came back with a vengeance once everything else died.  Let me clarify… I’m talking carrots the size of my calf.  So, I’m trying the same technique this year: direct sow, smother with other plants, MONSTER CARROT TAKE OVER.  They are starting to pop up through my thyme.

Ok, so now onto my other raised bed.  This was my bed as of May 25th.

This is my raised bed as of July 13th:

I think I really need to chop off or kill the marigold plant on the far left.  I have no idea why it is so freaking huge.

With the hopes of producing some big, fat, juicy garlic bulbs, I harvested some of my garlic scapes a few weeks back (and I left some on as an experiment).  I meant to write a blog on it, but neglected to do so.  Some say cutting the scape (the long curly cue part with the flower head filled with garlic bulbils) forces the plant to exert its energy on growing the garlic bulb underground instead of the flower up top.  My garlic stalks have a much thicker girth than the ones I had last year!  I chopped up the garlic scapes and used them in a stir fry.  They were surprisingly very, very mild tasting.

Since the leaves are starting to die, I might be digging my garlic bulbs up soon!

Now onto my specific pepper plants.  I am very excited because my peppers did not do so hot last year.  It has been VERY humid here the last couple months, so maybe they are basking in the hot, sticky heat.  They still have some color changing metamorphosis to go through, but they are growing big and abundantly!

 

 

 

 

 

And of course my snow peas have made some progress since my last blog.

And I did end up growing some Desiree Purple Snap Peas (but unfortunately they don’t taste as good to me, maybe a bit too fibrous and chewy, but they sure look pretty):

 

 

 

And randomly in honor of the Furry Convention being here in Pittsburgh, this is a sneaky pic I took while dining at a nice restaurant downtown this past weekend.  This furry had such a cute little tail!  Hopefully I won’t catch any furries in my garden or I will have to use my Critter Control. 😉

Even though times have been a little tough for me lately, it has been so nice to have my own little Garden of Eatin’.