Last night I pulled into the driveway after our trip to South Florida – and the first thing I did before going into the house was to go take a look at the Grocery Row Gardens. I knew that it had rained twice since we’d been gone, and that five days of skipping cucumber picking in prime cucumber season was a risky thing!

Multiple cucumbers were already the size of blimps and had turned yellow, so I left those for seed and picked the green ones that would still be palatable and good for eating and preserving.

We don’t have nearly as many cucumbers coming in as we did last year, but we’re still getting plenty for pickles and relish, as well as fresh eating.

We’re up to thirty pounds of yield thus far.

The paths in the Grocery Row Gardens are almost impassable now. It’s wonderful!

The summer solstice is coming up, so it’s time to prune the trees again. This will let light in and help the watermelon vines covering the pathways get a bit of sun. There are little watermelons everywhere now – it’s amazing.

My sweet potatoes, on the other hand, are not doing well. Something keeps cutting off the vines and tearing up my slips. I planted ten more slips the other day and they’re chewed down to nothing. My guess is that it’s either the ducks or some rabbits.

If I catch the culprit, I’ll eat him.

We plan to film a Grocery Row Garden tour this evening and get it on YT before the weekend. It’s truly lovely at this time of year.