Garden update

My first ripe tomatoes!

Gardening is way more fun when you get to start eating the things you are growing! I was so excited when I got home from work this afternoon and I had 2 grape tomatoes that looked red enough to pick, so I did. Woo hoo! There are more pinkish ones too, so hopefully I will have lots of ripe tomatoes over the next 2 weeks before I move. The tag says the grape tomatoes mature in 60 days, and I think it's been exactly 60 days (I seem to remember planting on May 15th or 16th). The other tomato plant says mature in 68 days, so I'm hoping to have something full size in about a week.

I nearly killed my lettuce over the weekend because I needed to water and then it was really hot, so it got all withered and sad looking. I watered it and have been watching it close and most of it revived. I read the little tab thing for the red lettuce and notices it says "full sun spring & fall and part sun summer" so it's probably been getting too much sun. Oh well.

Anyway, in honor of my first ripe tomatoes, I decided to have a big salad tonight, using mostly ingredients from my garden...but I did supplement with a few other things, but the whole salad is from locally grown+produced products. I was able to pick up a few things at the Farmer's Market at Pioneer Park over the weekend (tomatoes, zucchini, green beans, cherries, and some Nutty Guys stuff). The lettuce (green and red loose leaf), arugula, parsley, and grape tomatoes are from my garden and the I added some more tomato and zucchini from East Farms, some feta cheese from Gossner's, and the dressing I used was Caspers (I couldn't find a website for them, but they are in Providence, near Logan). It was so tasty!

My tasty salad

I know I am a super gardening nerd now, but I'm excited about the progress of my garden, so I'm including a few more pics:

This mess is 1 grape tomato plant (Juliet Hybrid) , 1 tomatillo plant, 1 tomato legend, and a bush cucumber plant in the back underneath everything else. The grape tomato plant is taking over the garden.

All 4 swiss chard plants are finally growing...about ready to cook up some more!

This was the first cluster of tomato fruit, but not the first to fully ripen...although some are starting to. Hopefully I can pick some soon because the little vine is starting to really sag from the weight.

This lower bunch is where I picked from today...one more is almost ready!

This is the tangled mess that is the view out my kitchen window, but you can see a few of the cucumber plant leaves

Tomato Legend plant...hopefully will be red in about a week