Back to the Land Mama: Home Garden Update and Harvest Totals!

So it has been about a month, so I figured it is about time to post an update! :) Here's the garden right now (tomato forest is more like it. . .):

The sunflowers are in full bloom, the tomato plants are completely unruly, and I am finally getting to taste the first fruits of my labor!

Remember when it looked like this?

It wasn't all unicorns and rainbows, however. . .

I lost two very large Beefsteak tomatoes to stupid fruitworms I had been battling all spring:

And just about every tomato bush (except the Celebrity tomato) has a disease of some sort. But rather than treat it, I am taking a passive approach and it seems to be working for now - the plant is setting and producing fruit faster than the disease kills the plant. . ah, the lazy woman's kind of disease management :)

Here's some of the good:

-Sunflowers in bloom: the plants are well over 7 feet tall!

Dragonflies in the garden:

- Pumpkins!! I have two growing. The bigger one growing (of course) outside the raised bed on the grass looks like some animal with claws attempted to haul it away last night. Hopefully the scratches aren't too deep to damage the pumpkin - I have heard when squash are small you can carve your name in the skin so that it remains there as it grows but these scratches are pretty deep so we'll see - I don't care if Mr. Raccoon carved his initials in it, the pumpkin is MINE!!

Pictures of the largest of the two pumpkins two weeks ago:

And today:

- Pepper harvest (and a few beans too)!!: I harvested the bell peppers green, but only one of them is a true green pepper (the one in the middle). The largest on the left is a red bell pepper and the one on the far right is a yellow bell. I wanted to harvest these in hopes that the plants would set more peppers (which they still haven't done yet). Jalapenos are growing well and there are plenty more still on the plant!

About a pound of fresh bell peppers from the garden!!

-And the tomato harvest!!

The Sunny Boy tomatoes right before picking. . .

How many tomatoes can you spot on this one section of a Better Boy tomato plant? :)

The first ripe tomato on the Celebrity plant. . .

These two tomatoes were my first tomatoes to be harvested this season! They are Old German Heirloom tomatoes and were quite tasty! Together they weighed about 0.59 lb, which in current grocery store prices of $4.99/lb for heirloom tomatoes, I would say these beauties are worth $2.50! (Their true cost is probably WAY more than that considering all the startup costs, compost costs, labor, etc that went into producing them. . .ever read the book The $64 Dollar Tomato by William Alexander? I probably should.)