It’s been a few weeks since our last PhotoEssay, and the garden has changed significantly! Here’s our overview for this week: 

Just a comparison of the same view last week: 

And the same view three weeks ago:

The vine crops have grown more than 10x bigger overall (and I’m pretty sure twice the size just since last week!) and the tomatoes are at least twice the size. The peas are gone and have been replaced with more plantings of squash and melons. 

While the garden looks great from a bird’s eye view, from a closer look I can tell you that some of the normal summer disease and spider mite issues are already starting to take hold.  But….I have enough neat things to show you without showcasing the start of the usual death and destruction. 

Here’s another view of the Vertical garden, taken a week ago. The vines had just reached the size where clipping them to the trellises was necessary that week, and they were already escaping the trellises again. 

And the same view again, perhaps a slightly different angle. This was taken yesterday. While the watermelon vines (closest to the front) are not thick (yet), they have clearly been growing quickly! It takes regular clipping or tying to keep the vines from getting out of control. 

We had a big harvest week this week as well. I’ll be posting the Grocery Garden Harvest Report soon, but we also harvested some sprouting broccoli, Swiss chard, kale, and onions from the accessible beds, cabbage from the colonial garden, and eggplant from the containers. The beets, carrots, and beans are from the Grocery Garden. 

The ‘On Deck’ sweet corn is tasseling! It isn’t even three feet tall when it supposedly should be five. Perhaps a little short on nitrogen? At any rate, corn doesn’t typically put on height after tasseling. I don’t see any signs of ears developing yet, so I’m not overly optimistic…But it is cool to have corn growing in our garden in a container. Maybe we will recommend it as an ornamental for containers? 


This is one of the artichoke plants. If you look really hard at the center of the picture, you can see a small, purple bud, which is the start of what will be the artichoke at some point. Artichokes actually ARE the flower buds. This one is still very immature, but it’s nice to see that we’ll get something out of this bed, even if not very much. 

Have a great weekend!