Raised-bed Garden Update

Well, my vegetable garden has been a mixed success.  Some things never came up, some plants (melons, cucumbers, and most of the squash) got eaten by bugs (nasty, ugly, stinky, fuchi squash bugs, eeeuu).

The Evil Squash Bug

But a few things came up and thrived.
Okra.  I have a great okra crop.  And there are so many pods coming on right now,  I'm having to freeze it.  More on that later.

The only thing I don't like about okra is how sneaky it is.  It's very hard, somehow, to find all the okra that is ready to be picked.  It really tries to hide.

Okra pretending to be a stem.

And succeeds!  I'll look and look and look, and swear they are all picked.  Then two days later I'll find one that is about 8 inches long and that's just too darn big!  However, the chickens will eat it if I cut it open.

I have a couple of lovely eggplant... plants.
Then I have a lot of black-eyed peas coming on.  They have been slow so far but I think I'm going to have an explosion of peas pretty soon.

Mystery Bean

This bean plant is either a rattlesnake bean or a red ripper.  I don't remember what I planted there, I just got so excited about putting seeds in the ground, I went a little nuts.  And this particular one has just grown and grown and never produced bean one, yet when it does, the mystery will be over.

My tomatoes started out fine but then got blight and pfffft.  Luckily I planted reserve tomatoes in other places. The rule is:  One can NEVER PLANT TOO MANY TOMATOES!

This zucchini is clearly trying to make up for the rest of his team getting offed by the DSB's. (the last two words are squash bugs).  By the time I got control of that situation, this plant was the only survivor left.
I learned my lesson;  get after the squash bugs earlier.  Next spring I will be on the look-out for those little red eggs on the underside of the leaves and get busy eradicating those destructive animalitos, con prisa!
Speaking of insects, I happened to see this drama on one of the picket stakes today.  The spider is definitely winning.  Go, Spidey!