Posted by oakandsage on 2013-07-22 02:02:48 UTC and edited at 2013-07-22 02:03:35 UTC

I shall label the seasons in my garden thusly:

Dec-Feb: The Season of Excessive Procrastination

Mar-May: The Season of Inarticulate Panic

Jun-August: The Season of Smugness

Sept-Nov: The Season of Isn't It Dead Yet I Need Room To Plant The Garlic

My potatoes are doing well, and one is preparing to flower.

This is kind of baffling to me. Previously, I grew potatoes as a cool season crop. This year, my potatoes started coming up in february and then all died off without having done much sprouting. I searched the area for tubers and found nothing of any great size. Then they sprouted again - in june, during a hot spell. Given the late timing and the conditions, I ignored them. I figured they'd just die off again.

But they didn't. Now I have a couple two-foot-tall potato shoots and a number of shorter sprouts. It doesn't seem like enough for a really exciting potato crop, but I'm surprised I've got any potatoes growing.

The black-eyed peas and yard long beans are also doing well and making me really happy. There aren't enough of them, but I have at least one happy black-eyed pea plant growing at about knee height and producing lots of pods, and one yard-long bean has climbed nearly all the way to the top of the wishful-thinking-oriented bean teepee and is now starting to think about maybe flowering. I'm totally jazzed. Somehow my garden just didn't seem complete without pole beans.

The tomatoes are doing well. Brandy Boy has one huge tomato that's nearly ripe and a few green ones, so it's delivering on the quantity end - we'll see if I get the promised Brandywine flavor. I've had three tomatoes out of Enchantment already and lots more on the way. I love Enchantment - it's very rich and umami, almost like a paste tomato (which makes sense given the oblong fruit shape) but without the mealy texture. It looks like it's going to be a heavy producer as promised, too - perhaps not as heavy as Jetsetter, but the incredible flavor makes up for that.

And of course there are plenty of Sunsugar. Not as many as last year, but it's early days yet. My entire garden is a bit late this year; given the weather this year, if I'd been on the ball, I'd have had tomatoes in june. But I was not. Still, the lateness is also keeping everything quite orderly, which I appreciate.

I have a few late volunteer tomato plants growing near where Sunsugar was last year. I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of fruit they produce. They may be Sunsugars, or they may be a hybrid with Jetsetter. They're not in the way of anything, so I decided to let them grow and see what happens.

The chard is happy and I have been eating it quite a bit. I'm glad to have chard again. I missed it when I hadn't got it.

And the melon plants! They're happily sprawling away, except the two that are happily climbing up alongside the beans. I have two immature melons! And it looks like more on the way. I know that by september, I'll have to give up on walking in the path under the bean teepee, because it will be full of melons. That's okay. It is all part of the plan.

Next year: Raspberries along the fence; more cowpeas; cucumbers.