200th post, a 2012 Garden Update

After slacking on picking for a few days, I finally decided that I needed to pick everything that I saw ripe in our garden. The picture above is what I got. This year has been decidedly poor for our red tomatoes, and I have no idea why. However, alternate colored tomatoes seem to be doing great!

The winner this year is our black cherry tomatoes, which besides being prolific producers (as you can see), also are very tasty. Our favorite flavor tomatoes has to be the purple Cherokees, which you can see two of right in the center. There are a number of peppers, and our yellow pear tomatoes are doing well also. However, the only red tomatoes that I could pick, even this late in July, are the two little ones near the center, and their flavor is only okay. We tried out a new variety, called black prince, and I liked the flavor, but like the reds, the plants aren't doing that well, and they just appear to be slightly larger black cherries (you can see a couple at the right). Also, although last year I had a lot of good sized pumpkins and squash, so far, I only have one... and it's already done. It is almost weird to have to contemplate making a pumpkin recipe in summer!


In other news, for the first time our onions seem to be doing well.

Towards the back of this photo you can see the leaves of our eggplant plant, and Blake tells me that we currently have about eight ripe eggplants that I need to work into our meals soon.

The tallest plant that you see in this photo is our black cherry, and it is taking over many of the other areas in its determination to grow and produce tomatoes.



My precious blood orange tree. Blake gave it to me for Valentine's Day 2 or 3 years ago, and although we have watched it stay healthy, and start with flowers, it has not produced a fruit for us yet. But... we think this may be the year!
In spite of Tasha's break ins right after we got her, and her removing a few branches of the tree from time to time, it still has a few little oranges that have made it through and we hope we will get to eat them this year!

In other news, as stated in the title, according to blogger, this is my 200th post on this blog! In addition to informing others of the latest in my life without sending out periodic e-mails, I have enjoyed using this blog as a way to release stress, and just to document my life so I can look back at it later.