On Monday, my parents and I worked a full day in their vegetable garden. We planted tomato, pepper, lettuce, sunflower, basil, cilantro, squashes, marigold, cosmos, daisy and cucumber seedlings. Dad staked his recently planted snow peas.

Some type of bug was eating the broccoli, cauliflower and bok choy that we planted a couple weeks ago. My guess it was the green caterpillar of the white cabbage butterfly. I replaced some of the seedlings, searched for green caterpillars (I found one) and then covered the patch with hoops and row cover.

We planted 4 types of pumpkins and winter squashes: Butternut, Buttercup, New England Pie pumpkin, Cinderella pumpkin (Rouge Vif d’Etampes) and a couple giant pumpkin seedlings. The giant pumpkins are at the edge of the compost pile and the other pumpkins an squashes just outside the garden fence. Last year, the squash vines took over the garden and even pulled down parts of the fence. This year they will have room to roam.

Last year I planted much too many cucumbers in Mom and Dad’s garden. I thought they wouldn’t want ANY this year, but, no, they want tons again. I planted 8 varieties: Diva, North Carolina pickling, Sumter pickling, Boston pickling, Straight Eight, Sweet Success, Tokiwa and Sooyow Nishiki. About 20 seedlings – and then Mom added a few more seeds for good measure. They grow up the 5 ft deer fence around the edge of garden, so they don’t really take up any space. When my nephew comes to visit, he runs to the garden to pick cukes and eat them immediately. Then he gets a big grin on his face.

Dad wrote down all the varieties and where they were planted for his records and then we called it a day. As we were marveling about the full garden, Mom remembered the beans – we forgot to leave room to plant beans! Arrgh. Well, as Mom emailed to me later in the week, they found a place to squeeze in 2 rows.