Growing plants from seeds is so much fun! My husband has a small tangerine tree that he started from seeds that came from tangerines we bought in Florida two years ago. It is still small, and he does not know if it will ever have fruit. He also started a tree from a blood orange seed I found this year. Most of the blood oranges do not have seeds or have ones that are not promising, but I found one, so he planted it just to see, and now we have a small plant.

He is also planning to try some of the heirloom squash seed from the honey butternut squash and the small spaghetti squash we bought. I can always get the larger ones at the farmers' market.

Today I transplanted into the main garden all the starter plants I had bought - 12 tomatoes, 6 each bell peppers, broccoli, and cabbage. Tomorrow I will plant seeds in the planters on the deck - green and yellow beans, beets, and spinach. I moved the lettuce I had started under Gro-lights in the sunroom out to the deck today. Tomorrow I will also transplant the started herbs into planters and pots on the deck, and dig up some mint for my Mojito pot. It was a perfect day - low 70s, full sun, slight breeze. The electric fence is up and working, and I strung the invisible fishing line around the poles at eye level. The water lines are hooked up, but we discovered one of the hoses needs to replaced before the series will put out a good stream of water. The blueberries are blossoming, and the blackberry blossoms are about to open. Life is good!

I began picking black raspberries on our terrace this week. I have almost a pint. I will need at least double that to make my first batch of jam. There are still plenty of red ones, but if we could get some rain, that would keep the rest from drying out. My husband tells me that the ones by the road on the larger woodland property are not ripe yet.

Our tomato plants are growing, but no flowering yet. That is also true of the pepper plant that was started last year in a pot and produced a single golden pepper, which we have harvested in order to encourage the rest. No flowering yet from the beans or snow peas. The squash are coming up.

I learned in the Master Gardener course years ago that tomatoes (and peppers) set fruit only when the nighttime temps stay between 55 - 75, and daytimes temps below 90. I remember a year when the temps were quite warm every night for most of a week, and I lost a lot of blossoms.

Today my husband presented me with three snow peas from the garden!

Six snow peas harvested today. They will go into stir fry for dinner. Tiny zukes and yellow squash with blossoms still attached coming along.

We're looking temps in the 90s for the next 4 days, and only possible thunderstorms for rain. I'm watering the planters on the deck every day, and the garden and berries so they get at least an inch of rain each week. We did have 2 days of storms last week, and got 1.37 inches of water in 2 days; that surely helped a lot. The green, yellow, and purple beans are looking good, some sun scald on the leaves, but we're still a long way from eating beans. We do have flowers on the tomatoes, and tiny peppers started on those plants. And of course, we have plenty of spinach and lettuce. I'm hoping we get veggies before it snows!