Apologizing and misc Garden

I really hate apologizing. It means I was wrong, and I hate to be wrong. But I think that I have to do it this time.

Dear Birds,

I am sorry to have accused you for being the responsible party for the "Great Edamame massacre". I still blame you for all of the missing ripe strawberries, but I think that another guilty party may be to blame for the edamame. During one of my morning garden inspections, I noticed one of the edamame sprouts I had protected from the birds had been "de-seeded" and a little slug was curled up next to it in a food induced coma. Let's just say that slug won't be bothering the garden in the future. So.... maybe it was slugs and birds, because 19 seems like a lot for slugs to accomplish overnight. The edamame seeds I planted in the raised container seem to be doing well, so let's hope that we will be eating fresh edamame beans later this summer.

So please stay away from the strawberries and I'll stop accusing you of eating my edamame seedlings.

Sincerely,

Apologetic Gardener

Well, that was a relief to get off my chest! So here are the plants in containers that are thriving so far.


They are the broad plants in the middle and the others are radishes planted to try and keep up with Ryle's voracious radish appetite.

Here are the two that survived the first planting.
Don't they look sad? All alone and small?

Well, they have friends close by, a team of burpless cucumbers, a scalloped squash (photo below) and some arugula.


In another container on the patio are these beauties.... Cherokee Purple tomatoes. I am really excited to taste these! They are supposed to have a deeper/richer taste than plain red tomatoes. Yum!
I bought this plant for Ryan, it is a "Tomatoberry" which I hope are very similar to the Strawberry Tomatoes we used to find at Costco. Looks like he will be able to let me know if the plant is a hit or miss very soon.


And this curious guy is my Green Zebra tomato. I'm sure he is very tired of me feeling and prodding daily to see if he is ripe yet. This tomato should be green and yellow when ripe. So I think the feel test may be the only way to see if he's ready.


And on another gardening note, I am pretty sure the Fairytale Eggplants I purchased are actually not Fairytale. I kept monitoring them waiting for the distinctive striping to occur and it still hasn't. Looking at some photos of this type of eggplant seems to show that the marbling occurs from the one-set, so I have a different plant. Oh well, maybe next year.
Ryle has been asking me the last few days if we can eat the purple eggplant. So I finally caved tonight and we harvested the largest of the 3 that are edible sized. Since we were finally going to eat one of the eggplants, I decided we might as well at the scallop squash I picked earlier this week and the zucchini that was sizing up. We can't eat just 1 squash/zucchini, so might as well combine them all for a side dish. We washed them up, sliced and tossed them on the grill with the rest of dinner, and they were so good! Ryan's response to the eggplant was "I didn't hate it." True praise indeed.

The jalapeno below (1 of about 4 good sized ones on the plant) was used in a last minute batch of black beans.
Hmmm..... Dinner was grilled chicken legs, rice, grilled eggplant/zucchini/squash, braised collard greens and some black beans. Yum! Summer is here and the garden will hopefully produce us lots of treats.