It has been a while since we have posted a garden update. After a very slow start, the garden did finally take off this year. The pumpkin plant is working on spreading in every direction, as is the cantaloupe. Most of the tomatoes are doing well also.
We have a strange dichotomy of success in our garden endeavors this year. The intentionally planted sweet corn failed miserably. The half that managed to germinate made it all the way to about two feet tall before stopping. We’re pretty sure it is the soil in this area — Steph had tried planting some sunflowers also, and they totally failed to germinate. In order to perplex us and further drive us insane, another area where some sunflowers grew marginally well last year had some volunteer plants come up. They ultimately were about twelve feet tall, and the picture of perfect sunflowers. I have considered broadcasting seeds of all types randomly about the yard, and seeing what happens next year… 🙂
Our best performing tomatoes of the year have been the Stupice and Amish Paste. 
The Amish Paste will be back in future years, it is the consistency of a Roma, but as big as the beefsteak varieties. The Stupice is good, but they ripened as a smallish tomato only slightly larger than the cherry tomato varieties. Leaves them as an awkward size that is too small to effectively slice, but bigger than you would normally simply pop in your mouth and eat. Their biggest draw is that they started ripening weeks before anything else. We have Steph’s favorite Besser variety for simply eating, and several of last year’s choices will come back for slicing.
The dilemma is what to do about some of the strains that are just starting to get tomatoes on them. A combination of really cool wet spring slowing things down, poor placement, and poor soil have conspired to leave a few varieties starting to set fruit in early September. Most disturbing is that two of these varieties traditionally do very well in Utah. So I will have to decide what to do about trying them again in the future. We actually had some volunteer Green Zebra plants come up that have set fruit faster than the intentionally started and planted new varieties. This puts the Green Zebra firmly on track for future year attempts.
Another success is our cantaloupe plant. It was a very late start after our plant from seed failed a few weeks after transplant.
I found a cheap replacement at a garden center, and decided to at least see if we could grow the plant, and be able to plan accordingly in future years. It took a while to get going, but did manage to make our trellis look like it had a purpose. And in the process it has set several mellons as well. One absolutely perfect looking cantaloupe is finishing ripening, two others don’t look quite as pretty but are well on their way, and a couple others depend on how soon we get cold temperatures. More importantly, the cantaloupe are growing on a trellis. So they need support to keep the fruit from falling off the vine too early. This leads to string and old socks being used to create cantaloupe hammocks!