Black raspberry season is getting close to over (it's usually only 2-3 weeks long), and the most I've gotten at a time this year was about an ounce and a half, just a small patch on the west side of the yard. But I see the raspberries rebounding on the east side where they got cut back last fall, so hopefully they'll be bearing fruit in another year or two.

I think it's too hot on our deck for peas in a hanging basket. I tried them in the Aerogarden twice, got a small crop the first time, enough for a couple stir fry meals, but they didn't grow well the second time. Not sure I've got a good space for snow peas in the garden this year, but I could try companion planting them with some of the tomatoes, though it may be too late for them until I wait to plant them in September.

I haven't put in any spaghetti squash yet, but I think I will put some in; last year they climbed up the tomato cages and did fairly well, and didn't seem to interfere with the tomatoes. Diane's not that fond of spaghetti squash, but when I pointed out how low carb they were, she thought they might be worth planting again this year. The leeks I put (plants from Johnny's, not seed) are doing well, I've got about 24 of them.

I've got several small tomatoes already, but they're not close to ripening yet. These are on the First Lady II plants, where the average size tomato is around 5 ounces, there's probably some on the 4th of July plants by now as well. My guess is I won't see any ripe tomatoes until mid to late July.

The urban garden project at UNL is in its 2nd year. This year the common crop is sweet corn instead of zucchini. So I've got two rows of sweet corn (one in the amended soil area, one not.) They went in late, I don't know how well they'll do. Sweet corn is kind of high carb, but if it's good, we'll just have to suffer through it. 🙂

I planted a row of dill seed, not much of it came up. I may try re-seeding the half of the row that didn't germinate.

I started the left Aerogarden today with Salanova, Buttercrunch and Black Seeded Simpson lettuce.

I'll wait a couple of weeks before starting the right one, probably also with an all- lettuce crop, though not Salanova unless I order more seed from Johnny's, as I finished off the seed I had.

I took the rest of the tomato plants that I had started indoors in March and put them in some bare spots in the garden, if I get any tomatoes from them at all, that'll be a bonus. Most of them were pretty big.

I'm not impressed with the First Lady II plants I grew from the seeds I got in January, next year I might switch to Defiant. It's a determinant but that's the one that one of the test gardens at UNL grew one year as a yield test and we got something like 100 pounds of them, and they were tasty tomatoes, and high-yield.

I've still got about 20 quarts of tomato juice left from last year, this year I think I'm going to switch to mostly making and canning tomato sauce, plus some tomato relish

I think it's probably too hot on our back patio to try this, hanging baskets of flowers tend to get baked to a crisp.

I wound up replanting most of the test plot sweet corn in the UNL soil test program, a combination of poor germination rates (which others have reported) and the fact that on Monday our gardeners pulled up most of the corn that had reached 6 inches high, probably thinking it was a form of crabgrass. (It does look similar at that height.)

I've marked both rows with some flags this time around and alerted the gardeners to the replanting.