Zucchini success and Zucchini fail

One of my Zucchini plants is really struggling along, but the other two are doing quite well. The plant shown below, that was origiannly a mystery, has turned out to be a Silver leaf Patio Heirloom Zucchini and has produced several vegetables. From my research, I've found this plant is specifically bred to fit into a small space.

First of the batch and so delicious!

Giant Onions

Zucchini leaf fungus

I had some white leaf fungus earlier this spring, but I treated it with a milk/baking soda mixture, and after only two treatments my fungus is gone! I used about 1/4 cup of milk and a tablespoon of baking soda with about a cup of water in a small spray bottle. 

It was important for me to treat this without chemicals, so I'm very happy this solution worked.

No more leaf fungus!

Zucchini fail :(

I eat my words...

Okay, so they are red peppers after all. Apparently we cut the first ones off before they were ready. I noticed them turning color on the counter.

The peppers on the plant are turning red. Yay! Love red peppers :)

Two of my Zucchini plants are showing signs of white leaf mildew.

This Zucchini plant is getting more sun, and I believe the silver coloring is natural to the plant. Time will tell!

These are not yellow peppers

Nor are they red peppers. Thank you, Home Depot garden center, for carefully labeling your plants. That iceburg lettuce last year wasn't iceburg lettuce, either.

Good thing I hate green peppers! At least they are are beautiful, healthy vegetables.

Fun With Squash

I went to Summerwinds Nursery yesterday. What a gorgeous nursery! The first thing that caught my eye was a table of the most gorgeous yellow Begonias and I'm kicking myself for not buying one for my new teacup pot. Ah well, I was shopping on a budget and I'd really just gone there for squash.

Mystery squash. I think it's a zucchini variety.

I was pleasantly surprised by the assortment of vegetables and herbs. They had both summer and winter squash. I bought a Bennings Green Tint summer squash, a Sweet Dumpling winter squash, and a squash without a tag in it that I think I got from the zucchini squash flat.

Left: Sweet Dumpling squash. Right: Bennings Green Tint.

Our bush beans aren't doing so well, but it's our fault. We tortured them before we transplanted them. I planted the mystery squash in with them. That's it added in to this bed in the back.

Bush beans and the mystery squash.

 The Roma tomatoes are surviving their early summer transplant and doing well.

Roma tomatoes

Roma and San Marzano tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes

The cherry tomatoes are also doing well.

Our daily strawberry haul.These are two different varieties, and we don't remember the name of the smaller strawberries. We're going to find out, because they have ten times the flavor of the larger ones.

Spring yeild 2012

The strawberry plants are survivors from last year. They seem to be doing much better this year, and some of these plants are stringers from the original plants.

We grew lettuce from small starters. We're now letting the bolted lettuce plants mature to claim the seeds for new plants for next summer.

These onions were grown from seed. We only got one flower, but we're going to harvest its seeds so for now we're leaving it be and making the bees happy.

After we expanded our fenceline we moved this raised bed and replanted the tomatoes in it. They're looking a little wilty, but still producing!

These are wild tomatoes that sprung up from seeds dropped last year. Same with the basil.

And today, the fruits of our labor: french bread pizza made with our own tomato sauce and fresh basil from the garden!