Structure in the garden

Today was the fourth day in row we had rain.

In between thunderstorms, I spent some time pulling weeds and cleaning out the rows of beans that have died. I weeded all of the zucchini and squash and spread them out. They had grown much larger than the rows we had allowed for and were sort of hemmed in by the rows of beans. I picked a couple more burst open watermelons, as well as one that I think might actually be ripe and intact.

Our Straight Eight slicing cucumbers seem to be coming into stride as the picklers start to die off, but I realized that I should have paid more attention to them. The vines of the slicing cucumbers had not climbed the trellis the way the picklers had done on their own. I untangled all of the vines and wove them up through the wires. Only one had worked its way up the trellis, and on the end of that vine was a long straight cucumber...the rest had short round cucumbers lying on the ground. It was like we had green golf balls growing. Very odd, but they tasted good.

Anyway, when I looked around, I realized that the cukes were not the only thing in need of support. One of the gourd vines was creeping along the base of the fence and the bell peppers have outgrown the bent coathangers we used to support them before a storm. The cherry tomatoes have outgrown the stakes or grown out the side of a tomato cage instead of the top. I guess we should have been more vigilant, but with the drought, our main focus was watering everything.