View of the garden from the deck on June 17

It’s happening! It’s time! Rampant growth, good looking plants, a few crop harvests imminent. This is my 44th garden (the first being in 1981 - and only 1992 was skipped as we were making our way from Pennsylvania to North Carolina). Here is a brief overview of progress on each crop type. By the way, I am continuing to do my daily garden minute, as well as weekly Instagram Lives - be sure to check them out at @nctomatoman.

All three bean varieties had excellent germination and all are covered with blossoms.

Bush Beans - Maxibell, Goldilocks and Fowler are primed for heavy production starting within a week.

Zephyr and Kefren with blooms and harvestable fruit already.

The growth of summer squash Zephyr and Kefren (2 plants each) is astounding. I will be harvesting the first from each today. Direct seeding of beans, squash, corn and cukes was a few days after planting tomatoes (which happened on May 1).

Cucumber plants growing up inside of tomato cages

With cucumbers it is only one type - Deli Star F1, from my friend Sam Austin in the UK. I have 2 hills of 2 plants each, using 4 foot tall cone shaped tomato cages as a trellis. All pants are blossoming and show small cukes - we will be harvesting within the week.

Sweet Peppers - 2 in the strewbale, 2 in flanking grow bags.

Now that warm weather is here (mid 80s most days), the peppers are taking off. I described the varieties in my last blog. At this point, things look great, with open flowers on all the bale plants, and fruit set on Fire Opal (which sadly doesn’t look correct - the immature fruit color looks more like Royal Purple).

Happy Eggplant basking in the finally warmer weather - their favorite!

Things are looking good on the eggplant front. Both straw bales plus one grow bag hold healthy plants just starting to show tiny buds. It won’t be long.

The main attraction, the tomatoes, are thriving so far. Fruit have set on 20 or so, with another 10 due any day. As usual, the first ripe will be small fruited - probably Mexico Midget, Sun Gold or Rosella Cherry. There is no serious disease to speak of at this point, and no critters munching the plants. Of course it is early and things may look quite different in a few weeks. It has been excellent tomato weather - days mid 70s to mid 80s, with the odd shower here and there.

Sweet Corn up to the top twine “fence” already.

My sweet corn experiment is looking just fine so far - the plants are beginning to pop out the central tassels. I’ve been pondering if I will have to protect the ears from some crows that are always hanging around our area.

Finally, I’ve attempted 10 crosses already. I won’t talk about them now; it will be best to wait to see which ones took.