Progress of sorts.

It's so exciting to see stuff actually growing!  We got such a late start that I don't really expect to harvest much except for herbs for the next few weeks.  Peas would be nice, but with the scorching hot Julyish weather we've had recently I am pretty sure those will be a bust.  I'll give it another couple of weeks and then pull it all for more bush beans or possibly something else.

Last year I only grew tomatoes in pots, until late in the season when I allowed a bunch of volunteers to grow and ended up with a mixed bed of peppers and roma tomatoes.  Those roma produced like gangbusters, so this year I started a tomato bed in the sunniest spot of the garden to try and get my heirlooms producing that well.  So far, the plants seem very squat and bushy.  Few (if any) flowers yet, but multiple thick, strong lower branches that just want to sprawl with tons of leaves but very little height.  They are all different types as well, so I'm hoping it's just a stage.  I did notice those bumpy proto-roots on all the thick ground-level stalks, probably because the straw mulch is tricking them into thinking they are laying on dirt.  Tomorrow I will be removing the mulch to pull weeds, so we'll see if I can get a better handle on what's going on then.  Right now I don't know what to make of it.

The first pepper!  A gypsy bell...it should turn orange.  You know you screwed up when one of the first veggies you get is a pepper.

This is an okra plant grown from seed.  I don't know if anyone in my house will eat okra, but I figure it's worth a shot.  I think it survived the seedling apocalypse that took place a few weeks back because it's one of the few plants I started in a pot outside...next year I hope to have a small area of the sun room just for starting plants so I don't lose them all.

Ichibahn Eggplant (last year's MVP of the garden).

WAY more of the cucumber and squash seeds came up than I was expecting.  Tomorrow will be thinning day.

The kohlrabi seem to grow a quarter inch each night!  They're working out so much better than expected that I am thinking about getting some seed and keeping them planted in succession.  My grandfather and father both grew kohlrabi when I was a kid, so I remember the taste well enough that I never dared buy it from the supermarket.

One of my volunteer tomatoes in the pea bed.  There are three with fairly large healthy stalks that I'll be leaving and trying to tie against the wall to the trellis for the peas.  I've pulled out dozens of volunteer tomatoes, and something HUGE that I think was a volunteer pumpkin from Halloween seeds.  I would have left it if pumpkins  didn't hog so much space.