• The squash bugs won, sort of anyway. After a couple of weeks of trying to kills by hand and using soapy water, we have lost all our squash plants and even our cucumber plants that started.  I was able to make 8 containers of squash casserole and thanks to our neighbor 4 packs for squash lasagna.
• I replanted 14 squash plants and it appears that 4 or so have survived the heat. We have cucumber relish and one jar of pickles. I hope that these new plants will start to produce and allow us at least a couple of gallons of pickles.
• Matt was able to get our rain barrel collection system put together this week and one rain storm we captured over a 55 gallon drum of water. We have been able to water the entire garden and hopefully save our sweet potatoes and some tomatoes for the past 3 days without running out.  We hope that in the near future we will be able to store at least 2 of these drums for use during these hot dry spells.
• Last night we pulled up all of the corn plants without harvesting a single ear. I have learned a couple things that I plan to try next year before giving up on growing corn after 2 years of no benefit. First, against what square foot gardening says, I think we need a deeper bed. The roots for the corn were very small and the kids were able to remove from the ground without difficulty. The current plan is to purchase and add another board to the sides of the bed. We will also be moving as much of our compost dirt as possible into these beds to help with deep roots and better soil.
• We are starting to get all three types of peppers, green, jalapeno and banana. I am hoping that given enough water we will have a good abundant harvest.
• Within the next week, we should also get our first watermelon and cantaloupe.

We are super excited about our garden this year. I purchased most of the plants from a local nursery and they all have taken off. We discovered this in our garden yesterday so I posted a picture on facebook to find out what it is and how to use. I do know it is a type of squash but really need to know when to harvest as well.

Matt grew up with the saying “knee high by the fourth of July”, fortunately for us, our corn is already past knee high at Memorial Day. I inserted the kids for some perspective.

Next we have peppers, this is a banana pepper.

We decided after losing all of our pickles and cucumber relish in the freezer a couple of weeks ago to plant some addition plants. I am hoping to have a bumper crop this year.

I am relieved to see that the sweet potatoes we started our selves from last year’s crop are starting to grow and appear the right color.

We have already started to freeze several batches of basil. I am wondering if I can do the same with dill.

Squash plants are taking over in this bed.

Finally in the past two days our watermelon and cantaloupe have sprang to life.

Please leave a comment to help me know what the mystery squash plant is and how to use it!

I am super excited about the way our garden is growing this year. We have actually already started to harvest and freeze basil and dill. Today, I found four of the smallest squash ever, the size of my hands. I am hoping that with the expected sunshine in the next week, things will start to grow bigger quickly. So here are some pictures I took on Saturday.

Corn almost knee high!

cucumbers are starting to grow.

beans that we planted seeds for.

Sweet potatoes like warm and sun, hopefully they will start to perk up .

The tallest plants are the tomato plants… we are seeing some yellow flowers but these also need some sun to grow!