I noticed a few more tomato babies today. Granadero, Jaune Flamme, and Juliet have all set some fruit. Everything from the second round of planting is flowering now. Cream Sausage and Maglia Rosa are lagging a bit--they may be getting a little too much shade. The Beneventos, Lucky Bees, and Paul Robeson in the new bed are a few weeks behind, but the plants look nice and healthy.


I'm also probably going to do a very late planting of 1 or 2 Napa Chardonnay plants, which I've never grown before. Last month, I made the mistake of not emptying my pockets before tossing my pants in the wash. The remainders of my Groovy Tunes, Fat Frog, and Jochalos packets along with an entire packet of Napa Chardonnay went through the wash. Jochalos and Napa Chardonnay also went through the dryer. I honestly didn't think any of them would germinate, but I threw each variety in a 4" pot and put them on the heat mat. The two that avoided the dryer were at nearly 100% germination, Napa Chardonnay was around 50%, and none of the Jochalos made it.

Maybe I need to put my seeds through the wash.

@LindaJean I'm lucky they were in little plastic baggies or I would have been scraping seeds off of everything!

I'm still waiting for Napa Chardonnay to get a bit bigger, but all of the rest of the tomatoes are in their final places. I went ahead and moved the Jochalos to their big pots on Sunday. They're only around 4" tall but they're already putting on buds. These micro dwarves are so fun to watch--I think it's going to be a new obsession. I was also thinking they might be good to grow for some of the seniors my partner works with through the housing authority.

I'm a little under the weather, so I haven't accomplished much this week beyond watering and keeping an eye on everything. I did go ahead and bag some blossoms this morning. I'm attempting to save seed from Pink Fang, Black Prince, Black Krim, Jaune Flamme, the dwarves, and the micros this year. It's actually been a few years since I've saved any veggie seeds, so I hope I'm not too out of practice. The micros can be a little tricky to bag.


The micros are living on the back patio for the time being.


We liked Lemon Ice quite a bit last year, but the plants look even better this season. They're both loaded with blossoms.


And the Jaune Flammes are putting on like crazy.


The cucumbers are starting to come on, too. I finally got them strung last weekend and I think it was just in time.

After another rainy week (almost 5"), I was finally able to go out and get some weeding done today. We're still working on getting the panels cut for the tomato cages. There are 6 more to go and I'm hoping to have them up by the end of next week. If not, some of the plants may need some extra staking and pruning because the rain really prompted a growth spurt out there.

I found our first little cucumber this morning--a Max Pack. I've only grown these once before, but it was a bad cucumber beetle year and nothing did well. I'm hoping these will be as prolific as they say and we can make some good pickles with the excess this summer.

Some things have come up that are taking priority over the garden right now, so I'm just doing the bare minimum and trying to keep everything alive in this heat. We've been picking Tasty Jade and Max Pack cucumbers for a couple of weeks and just picked the first of the tomatoes last week. Jaune Flamme and Juliet were first this year. Now we've had 5 Jaune Flamme, 4 Juliet, and the first Maglia Rosa yesterday. Unfortunately, I've already had to pull the White Tomesol, Amish Paste, and San Marzano due to disease.