Summer Garden

We came home from the family reunion last week and couldn’t believe how much the pumpkins & squash had grown since we were gone!  We have one decent sized pumpkin already, and several other little pumpkins & squash starting to come in already. And some of the vines grew about 5 or 6 feet longer while we were gone for the week!

The big passion fruit vine is loaded and it looks like some of the fruit is starting to turn purple. 

And we’re super excited for our first little crops of avocados & Mexican limes ever!

And the sweet potato vines that I cut from the pots out front and planted in a few spots in the back yard are really taking off. They’re just ornamental (Kolby was disappointed when he heard that).  And it looks like I’ll need to thin them out pretty soon before they take over the surrounding plants. 

Unfortunately the smaller passion vine, which had reached all the way to the top of the arbor, couldn’t support it’s own weight yet and it fell down. So I’ll have to go out and help train it back up again.

And the 2 new passion vines that I planted on the south side yard are growing in great. 

Plus, surprise surprise — remember the malabar spinach that I took a cutting of from a nursery almost a year ago?  (https://bradshaw-family.blogspot.com/2017/09/malabar-spinach.html?m=1)  Well, it rooted in water, and then I carefully planted it in 2 or 3 places in the yard, but unfortunately I watched each plant gradually shrivel and die. That was months ago. Since then, I planted the 2 new passion fruit and one purple clematis flower in that little planting area. And guess what sprouted up the other day?  4 or 5 little Malabar spinach plants!  Now that a couple of them have started to vine, they’re growing at a tremendous rate — each vine growing probably a foot longer in just 2 or 3 days. I’m afraid the more dainty clematis may be overtaken. (Although that’d be sad because the clematis had such beautiful flowers, I’ll probably just let them grow because the Malabar spinach seems to be much faster & easier to grow now that it’s actually growing, and I like fast, easy growing plants!  Plus, it’s quite pretty with its purple colored vine and eventually it’s dark purple berries. And the leaves are edible. I’m looking forward to beautiful, full greenery along that fence whenever we look out that window.  :)