Crazy Vines and Farm Baskets

The decorative frondy item in the back are the parsnip seeds that just finished in the garden.  The second years growth on parsnips aren't for fruit but to go to seed!

 I find that I've been remiss in posting garden box updates!  Since I posted this, we've put out two more boxes and are going to be ready to put out a third by mid-week.  I don't know where the time goes.  The summer is flying and we're so excited about all of this heat.  I know, I know it's crazy, but this years garden is well ahead and it's really fun to see what it will produce!  Last night we had to actually cut off the Italian Squash and our Crafter's Gourds.  The vines are insanely vigorous and there is so much fruit started on them.  We decided to cut them back a little so the plant could put it's energy toward growing the fruit and not just vining all over the place.   All of the squash is doing beautifully!  It's looking like we'll have ton's of winter squashes for storage.

We haven't had much luck with pumpkins the last two years so we didn't focus on them this year.  We had three seeds left and planted them with a take it or leave it mentality.  Well, with little effort, this warm, wet summer has given us three huge vines that are now putting on pumpkins!  To top it all off, we had what we thought was a volunteer Cucumber plant growing out by the asparagus.  We left it to vine for two reasons, to see what would happen, and because early on we weren't sure how many of our cucumber plants would make it.  It's thriving, and seems to be growing into a watermelon with several fruits started!

I digress.....As to the purpose of this post, the farm baskets :)  Week two brought more lettuce's.  We had another head of butter lettuce, spicy salad greens, arugula, a little swiss chard and a few bulbs of fennel for each basket.  Week three, you could see further progression.  A bag filled half with arugula and half with spicy salad greens,  about 1/2 lb. of green beans for each family,  three more fennel bulbs, a zucchini, an Italian squash, and a jar of our freshly made red currant jam.  This week should see more beans, some cucumbers and more squash.  The lettuces seam to be waning so we're looking to a fall crop once the weather starts to begin it's cool down.  We're getting ready for our second planting and are hoping to rotate through the fall with more new items.  Guess what's on the wish list??  This very cool system, we'll see, maybe we can have some fresh produce year round!  Happy Monday!