Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary...

How does your garden grow?
My summer garden has been in the ground since early April. I have planted a summer garden for well over 20 years, even when I lived on a second story of an apartment complex in Jacksonville, Fla. I just grew tomatoes and cucumbers in 5-gallon buckets. It works very well, just remember to drill drain holes in the bottom of the buckets and keep the soil moist, because in the soil in the buckets dries out faster.
Ever since I've been living in my house, which is nearly eight years now, I've tried to grow one new thing besides my tomatoes and cucumbers.
A few years ago it was yellow squash. I've also done snap peas. They rarely made it into the house. I just stood at the plant and would eat the two or three that were ready to pick!
The past couple of years I've tried my hand at eggplant. The first two tries were with Ichiban eggplant, or Japanese eggplant. It's the long, thin eggplant. I got a few to ripen, but that was a bit of a disappointment. I was ready for some eggplant!
I couldn't find the Ichiban eggplant seedlings this year, so ended up with a traditional "Black Beauty" eggplant. Now I'm really hoping I get some produce from these plants.

Black Beauty eggplant

I've also planted Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, and what I call "slicing" tomatoes. They are Big Boy variety and when they start coming in I pretty much begin my summer diet of BLTs with fresh tomatoes, turkey bacon and lettuce. It's making my mouth water just thinking about them.

Sweet 100s

Roma tomatoes

Big Boy tomatoes

I also have some volunteer squash growing in the garden. Quite unexpected and more a mistake on my part. This winter I was a little lazy about my composting and sometimes just threw my vegetable matter right onto the garden plot, rather than to the backyard where my sad attempt at a true compost pile is located. I think I have butternut squash seeds that have decided to come up. I have no idea if they will do well in the summer. I probably should have torn the whole bunch out, but I'm willing to see what happens. I can always take them out if they get way out of hand (and they look like they might!)
I should get the first ripe tomatoes by July 4.
Until then, I'll dream of yummy BLTs and watch how my garden grows.