Father's Day Challenge, Mission Accomplished!

It has been awhile since I've posted and the garden has made much progress in that time.  The main reason the posts have been scarce this year is between fixing the house up and chopping down ultra-fast growing weeds, my time has been a bit tight lately.  As you can see in the first picture, we will have fully red, 100% vine ripened tomatoes to eat on Father's Day this year.  That alone motivates one to take a few minutes and post an update.  Since we're on the subject of updates, in my usual rambling fashion, I'll try and catch everyone up on just how "farm like" the Farmville Reality Project is becoming!  First we'll cover the tomatoes.  The second picture shows how happy they are in their chosen spot.  In fact they are about as close to what can be called a tomato forest, if such a thing were to ever be invented.  Both of the plants that were planted under the plastic tunnel back in early March are about six feet tall and have so much foliage that I've been pruning them back.  They also have enough fruit set to yield us 40 to 50 pounds of tomatoes easily from the both of them.  One of them is an Early Girl, which is an indeterminate type, which means it will keep setting more fruit throughout the season as long as it is healthy.  The other one is a determinate type, which sets a heavy main crop and then slows down setting more fruit.  What's not in the picture are the two later planted ones next to them.  Those are setting quite a bit of fruit now and will start producing when these two slow down in a couple of months.  We also planted six paste types called San Marzano in a another spot by the old barn.  All in all, the tomatoes are growing amazingly well and thrive in abundant Arbuckle sunshine. 

The next picture up is the golden zucchini that much like winter squash, has the potential to feed the world's hungry masses.  Each plant yields a nice size squash each and every day, or two smaller ones if you prefer.  The name of the variety is Butter Stick and it has never let me down as a heavy producer.

The fourth picture is an eggplant plant.  I have to state it this way since I'm married to a teacher and she will hold me back a grade if I don't use proper grammar.  In the past, eggplant has been tough for me to raise.  The seedlings usually get beat up pretty bad by chewing insects that I've never quite figured out how to identify let alone annihilate.  I think planting a foot or so up off the ground in a pot has solved that problem and we will get plenty of eggplants this summer.

 The fifth picture is my version of a herb pot.  This one has rosemary, thyme, and dill in it.  Probably not the best choices as far as who likes to play nice together in the sandbox but the choices were driven by what sounded good with the many things I plan to cook the next few months.  The rosemary is the one that is out of place because it likes to be watered deep and then dry out before getting watered again.  The other two would not be on board with that plan but so far, the rosemary has cooperated and seems to be doing fine.

 The sixth picture is the classic summer herb, basil.  A couple of years ago, the main grunt worker (besides me of course) helped me process and freeze a whole bunch of pesto made with fresh basil and garlic from the garden at the other place.  Since she worked so hard in plucking and washing piles of basil leaves, I ended up giving her the lion's share of the finished product.  That left me severely under supplied that following winter.  What I did to address this issue was to marry my main grunt worker and now she will not only help process this season's basil into frozen pesto, but more importantly, she is now obligated to share the finished product with me!  That is the ultimate win-win.

The last picture is the parsley pot.  There is one curly leaf plant and one flat leaf plant.  Parsley is one of those herbs I would probably not buy at the market unless it was for some specific recipe but it's funny how when you have it on hand like this, you use it quite often.  Many dishes are "livened" up by just a small amount of chopped parsley sprinkled in right before serving.  It also is the base for an Argentinian sauce called Chimichurri that is very tasty on a big grilled steak.

This post is the first one I've made since Blogger.com updated their site and I for one am a happy camper.  The new format is much easier to use, especially when it comes to placing the pictures in the right place relative to the text.  Since it's so easy to use, maybe I'll even post more often and get some pictures of all the other things growing around Farmville!