Monstrous Garden!

 Since we built new garden plots in a new location, we had more fresh compost and dirt, including alfalfa pellets. Because of that, our garden was very successful! The tomatoes are jamming, the green beans and pea pods are about done, but they were delicious, we got some cool and crunchy cucumbers, and the zucchini has been absolutely crazy! They're the big, humongous ones that people like to show on FB. We pick biweekly, and they come in clusters! They have shaded our romaine, so the romaine is more successful than other years because they haven't seen much sun and keep producing. Our basil is about normal, we've always had the same level of success with it. It makes very tasty pesto!

I'm sure when we first put the garden in, a little extra fertilizer went in too...

We had extra sticks from our tree that we used as compost at the very bottom so we wouldn't need as much dirt.

Baby garden

Looking just right in late June.

The thing that makes our garden monstrous is the mystery squash that's been growing. We noticed it right away, right after we planted seeds, like the day after, meaning it was not a purposeful plant. We assumed it was probably pumpkin because we had used all of our compost dirt, which had some composted pumpkins in it from years past and I noticed some pumpkin seeds in our compost. We continued to think and hope it was pumpkin because it was doing so well and we have had mediocre success with pumpkins. But now, the fruits are lengthening and looking more like zucchini, though definitely not that, and some are starting to turn yellow. Which could very well mean that they're yellow squash. However, I have planted yellow squash before and it was on the same timing as the zucchini, whereas this is not. It was sprouting way before anything else and didn't get fruit until way after, especially the zucchini. So, we'll continue to wait and see what it is, maybe it's some new cross breed of squash, who knows? (FYI: I have only planted yellow squash once, and that was way before we had a compost bin, so it's hard to believe it's that either.)

This was taken just before the tomatoes started to ripen. You can see the tomato plants on the left. The zucchini and the mystery squash are planted behind the tomatoes and are covering the pavers that are right next to the sunroom.

The mystery squash spreads everywhere! See it on the deck?

And over my tomatoes. I have to trim it back at least a few times a week.

They're very well pollinated. Whenever I go in the morning to pick veggies the bees are very busy with all the yellow blossoms. I've never seen so much pollination in our garden! And do you see the darker green vine in the pic? That's part of the vine work and it's thicker and darker than the other vines. I've never seen that before either.

Here's another view of a darker vine and a fruit that's starting to turn yellow on the left.