The good and the bad

First, the bad.

In short, diseases and pests. I've lost quite a few plants this year and have others that aren't doing well.

My rhubard that was doing so well this spring

April

now looks like this:

My green beans have been sluggish from the start, and they look like they have some type of disease.

All of the leaves look like this:

My cantalope has been through hell, and its future is still very uncertain. It started out strong...

but in late June it started to wilt and disintegrate. I chalked that up to fungus and gave it up for lost, but it came back. Now, the poor thing is getting chewed on by rabbits.

Empty stalks where leaves used to be. I took the cage off weeks ago, and they left it alone until recently. Little bastards.

I don't have any pictures, but my zucchini plant also disintegrated. One day it had leaves, with a couple small chew marks, and two days later, it had no leaves and just a few limp stalks.

Since I'm such a lazy gardener, I haven't even tried to figure out the actual causes of all of these failures. If anything else goes, however, I might have to get serious and do some research.

Now, for the good.

Before the zucchini plant died, I picked two zucchinis.

The tomatoes and peppers are really taking off.

I've already used several peppers in some roasted tomato sauce that I made with last year's frozen tomatoes. Yes, I still have a few of last year's tomatoes in the freezer, but I'm trying to get them used up, because this is what I picked today:

That's a mix of Italian Heirloom and Speckled Roman with one small Nebraska Wedding. This is the first year I've tried Speckled Roman, and I think I'm going to like it. They are the biggest paste tomatoes I've seen. Needless to say, we've been enjoying a lot of tomato sandwiches.

I got a few potatoes from the plants growing in the grow bag.

I pulled them out because they weren't doing well. The others are still growing, but they don't look great, either, so I might not see too many more potatoes.

Last but not least, I picked my first Sheep's Nose Pimento the other day, and it seemed to have a message to share: