Critter Farm Garden Report #2: Vegetables

Following yesterday's blog on the various fruits growing at Critter Farm, today's report is all about the veggies I'm trying really hard not to kill. I'm not quite ready to resign myself to the fact that I may be better with animals than I am with plants. But, I'll let you be the judge.

First of all, take a good look at that picture at the top. In that very small space we've got, from left to right, snow peas, shelling peas, radishes and potatoes. Yes, that's right...all of them, right there, all smooshed together. A bit more space between the rows will be on my mind next planting season.

On a bright note for me, the snow peas are a success:

The first of them were harvested two nights ago. There were seven, perfect and beautiful pods, but I ate one the minute I got it off the vine:

leaving six that I generously split with my Jim for dinner that night.

The radishes are done. I didn't really take advantage of these. I think I harvested maybe 2 bunches. Their burden was that they became ready about the exact time that the donkeys arrived at the farm and I suddenly didn't care much about radishes anymore:

These will get pulled and sent to the compost bin shortly and replaced with something else. Is it too late for carrots? Who knew radish flowers were so pretty?:

I pulled this big guy out yesterday. Have you ever seen one so big?:

The shelling peas have large pods but no discernible large peas yet. I can't wait - these are my favorite:

Here's the first Yukon Gold potato bloom:

The tomatoes I started from seed back in April are still embarrassingly small compared to some of the pictures I've seen on other blogs. Please don't taunt me because of this. These are cherry tomatoes:

Here are my extremely small yellow pear tomatoes, also started from seed:

These are Roma and Yellow Globe tomatoes (not started from seed). Nice shadows, huh? I did this on purpose:

My sweet red pepper is looking pretty sharp. Can you see the baby pepper?:

The sweet yellow pepper is positively anemic compared to his friend, Red, next door:

The cukes, while healthy looking, are also way behind:

This is my first attempt at a birdhouse gourd. It just sounded really cool:

But, this....is very sad. Part of the reason a lot of my neat veggies are still so small is because they sat like this for a very long time, awaiting my attention:

Those are my green beans and green and yellow zucchini. Hopefully, I can get those into the ground finally tomorrow. It's supposed to be 95 degrees, though, and may not be the most optimum time.

Moving on to herbs...
The basil that I started from seed in April is pretty much the same size as when I stuck them in the ground over A MONTH ago. What the heck?:

The chives are doing well. It's fairly hard to kill chives, so it's a good choice for my garden. Here's a really pretty chive blossom:

I feel my method of growing definitely leans toward the benign neglect method. I love them but sometimes I unintentionally ignore them. They pretty much need to be hearty and take care of themselves for the most part. I will make sure they get water and light, but they can't be needy, troublesome or disease-prone. With that said, let's see how my first large vegetable garden fares from here!