More on May gardening

We finally had some rain last night!  About 3/4", which made everything in the garden all cheerful and perky this morning.

I have one Mortgage Lifter tomato growing in a container.  It was languishing in the pot ghetto until I noticed that it was setting fruit, so I plopped it into a large pot I had been given.  The plant hasn't grown much and is now randomly turning yellow and dropping branches (which is exactly what happened to last year's ML), but it is loaded down with smallish tomatoes and they are beginning to ripen.  I have another ML planted in the ground and it is the tallest plant in the tomato patch.  I'll save seeds from that one, but in the meantime I'm going to enjoy munching on these:

Mortgage Lifter - first ripe 'maters!

This year's volunteer tomato crop has been pitiful, but I finally found one trying to move into the tomato patch.  It's from the area that had Sungold last year, so I'm curious to see what it turns into.  Now I just have to find a spot for it...

Volunteer #1

The squash plants are all growing nicely and beginning to bloom.  So far I have gray zucchini, yellow scallop, yellow straight neck (which I don't really like, so I'm not sure why I plant it every year) and Delicata growing and I planted some seeds for spaghetti squash and pie pumpkins in amongst the corn.  They are taking their own sweet time germinating, so we'll see if any of them come up.

Gray zucchini

Yellow scallop squash

Oh and the sneaky tomato plant (Blondkopfchen, aka "Little blonde girl") that forced itself into a pot by the door is now blooming.  According to what I've read, they are yellow cherries with a point on the bottom, similar to Riesentraube, but very sweet.  I bought the seeds just because I liked the name.  Just don't ask me to pronounce it.  :)

Blondkopfchen blooms

May garden report

I've been working really hard on reviving the garden this year after battling the drought and root-knot nematodes last year, along with the Invasion of the Giant Weeds.  According to what I could find, allowing the soil to dry completely (or even better, solarizing it), then adding copious amounts of organic matter can really help knock down the number of nematodes present in the soil.  I also read an article this past winter about an organic fungicide (Actinovate) that had been shown to work on nematodes in field trials, so I sprayed that on the soil this spring.  So far the garden is doing much, much better this year and I'm hopeful that we'll be enjoying lots of home grown produce this summer.

Lazy Wife and Kentucky Wonder pole beans

Eggplants, peppers and Christmas pole lima beans

Tomatoes

Inigo, included because he's so darned cute.  :)