Again, the Garden has great lessons for life.  As I wrote in April, this year, I did quite a bit of early preparation for the garden.  Sometimes, if you work hard, and conditions are just right, you get *really* lucky.  It looks like that’s what will happen with the garden this year.

Here are some of the tomato seedlings and a baby summer squash, immediately after they were planted back in late April.  Thanks to a warm weather prediction, I was able to get all the summer garden plants in the ground 2 weeks before I usually do (to avoid the frost).

Here they are a couple weeks later, after I added the supports.  (The pots contain hot peppers.)

Thanks to a very warm spring and the automatic watering system, I had the lushest June 1 garden I’ve every had.

The squash and basil were producing on the first of the month, so we could enjoy BBQ garden pizzas.

The cucumbers and butternut squash had a similar late spring.  Here they are after planting in late April.

And, here they are by early June (see them climbing the back fence?).

And this is what they look like today.  The cucumbers are producing like mad — I’ve had to resort to giving gift cukes to deal with the volume.  The butternuts are still too young to harvest, but if the early fruits are any indication, this fall should bring the biggest harvest of butternut squashes I’ve ever had.

And the tomatoes?  They are insane.  We’ve never had plants this big with this much fruit before the 4th of July.  We had our first ripe tomatoes on June 22nd!  What a great way to celebrate the first day of Summer (and yes, in an odd coincidence, it was overcast and drizzling that day).

Look at all those fruits just waiting to ripen in the sun!

The heat wave we are currently experiencing in California will only speed the rate of production.  Yesterday’s harvest was awesome — the last of the arugula that had gone to seed, and cukes and squash galore, plus one ripe pink caspian tomato and a few green tomatoes for frying.

I’m looking forward to a tomato-tacular summer!