Busy Moms Do It Best: Garden update

My family went out of town for a few days. We had arranged for a ten year old girl in our neighborhood to water our garden in our absence. Sadly, she did not give the garden enough water and many of our tomatoes and peppers got blossom end rot:

(^here's the damage! Ugh, its so frustrating)

However, here is what survived:

The zucchinis that survived (some were picked before we left) will make more than one lovely meal

The melons are climbing their trellis nicely, and look:

watermelons!

yummy! I still need to find out how they are fertilized

(on their own like tomatoes or are there male flowers like zucchinis?)

Either way, I better find out soon

I told you the tomato bed was a friggin jungle, but look closely....

Yummy heirloom tomatoes are in there (along with a few other surviving types)

The Carmen peppers that survived are looking good.

My DH is going to have a stroke if they don't turn red soon.

Having green peppers (and tomatoes) is like taking a kid to a candy store and telling them to pick out what they want to come back and buy in a few weeks....its torture!

^The poblano peppers decided to finally get with the program.

I think these are the peppers I am the most excited about. I cannot wait to make homemade chile rellenos

Here's a pepper bed shot:

I didn't come home to any eggplants, but those bad boys flowered like crazy while we were out of town:

I am starting to equate a garden to a "watched pot" because when we came home the cucumbers went from a few weaselly little sprigs, to vining, flowering, plants.

Its like they started going through puberty or something:

I need to find out how they pollinate too :( (better hurry)

So don't get me wrong, I like cucumbers raw, but I LOVE dill pickles.

So my real goal for these plants is to make my own pickles. In order to do that I looked ahead of time how much dang dill is required for this type of project. HOLY CRAP! BUNCHES. Literally! So I had to plant an abundant amount of dill this year. I planted a huge pot of it, and also put it in my small herb bed.

All signs point to the pot being the winner (even though they were planted a week or two later)

The bed gets very little late afternoon sun.

The pot gets half sun. It is important for dill to not get too much sun.

My favorite "herb to be" is the Bay Laurel tree I got for Christmas. I cannot wait until I am cooking with my own Bay leaves. It is starting to have offshoots and is branching. I don't want to pick any leaves until I know it can survive. Yay!

I was very surprised to come home to find I still had zucchini plants, but I think this will be short lived.

We've been fighting squash borers and the plants are showing all the signs that these bastards have infiltrated camp. I only give them another week at the most.