After getting Peanut back to sleep after her green bean shake this morning I went out to the garden to pick the last of the strawberries – almost a gallon of berries about the size of my thumb. Nothing impressive to look at, but they’ll taste great this winter. (I guess it’s a sign of a good crop when you’ve picked so many strawberries that by the end of the season you’re not even tempted to sneak a few as you’re picking them.)

But, with the strawberries wrapped up and the 4th of July just a day away, it means the summer fruits and veggies are just around the corner. The first of the peas, beets, and broccoli were picked earlier in the week.

The “Super Sauce” tomatoes keep getting bigger and bigger. They are supposed to be a super-sized seedless Roma tomato – great for fresh salsa, slicing, sauces and freezing. To give you a reference, the largest tomato in the photo below is about the size of oblong baseball – or twice the size of a grocery store Roma – and shows no signs of ripening yet. The plants started out great, but the cool, rainy weather has been hard on them. While most of them still look OK, a few plants set on tomatoes early and have stopped blooming since. I’ve decided to hold judgement until the end of August – plus, we planted a handful of a Celebrity and Early Girls as back up.

We’re just a few days away from the first summer squash and zucchini. That means in few days plus one week we’ll have way too much summer squash and zucchini.

The black raspberry plant is even trying to contribute on it’s first year… though what you see here is the entire crop.

With the kiddos deciding against planting the full sized pumpkin patch this year, we found a spot for some of the seeds in the garden – we’ll see how much they take over by this fall.

And then there’s the black berry plant. I planted two black berry plants early this spring that we ordered with the black and yellow raspberry plants. Neither one of the black berry plants did anything – at all. I had given up on them. They looked so dead and dry that the stems had snapped of both of them about a month ago. And then about a week ago a small green shoot popped up – we won’t get any berries this year, but at least we’re still in business.