Due to the delightfully recent cool mornings, we continue to harvest really fine lettuce - this could be my most successful experience with lettuce in my 22 years of Raleigh gardening. If we can avoid super high temps, I estimate another couple of weeks before we bit it adieu. Greens - mustards, collards, kale and chard - have also been fine, whether ending up in smoothies, sauteed as a bed for grilled fish, or wilted in pasta dishes. Some of the beets are approaching an inch in diameter, so given ample watering, harvest could begin in a week or so.
The bush beans and summer squash are showing good sized buds, so it won't be too much longer before harvest. The straw bale work is progressing nicely, and the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant residing in bales are easily the equal of those in containers or in the ground, with respect to progress and health. There are some open eggplant blossoms, good sized buds on a few peppers, and the tomatoes are setting fruit - Tennessee Suited, Sleeping Lady (both dwarfs growing in the driveway), Mexico Midget and Polish come to mind as having developing tomatoes. Most indeterminates have open flowers, and about half of the driveway grow bag dwarfs do as well. Perhaps because of a few cool nights, the plants in bales and black containers are growing a bit faster than those in the ground or in white grow bags (no surprise - absorbing vs reflecting the heat).
So far, the minor problems experienced are a few near broken main stems on tomatoes (I didn't get them fully tied to stakes before yesterday's gusts that preceded a thunderstorm - they were secured today and are all fine), one dwarf - Sweet Adelaide - that is off to a slow start and struggling (the replacement plant was mistakenly included in a donation tray!), a trace of white fly on a tomato plant (hand crushed all I could find), and a few eggplant that seemed to be experiencing some decay at the stem just below the soil line (I buried them deeply in hopes that they will root above the trouble spot). Really, that's it - I've removed a bit of lower tomato foliage when yellowing or brown spots indicates a trace of Early Blight (the foliage that was down in a few of the grow bags or pots near the soil surface doesn't dry off as well after watering). I've filled in a few spaces in the bean and squash plantings due to a few non-germinating seeds.
At this point, I am estimating that mid to late June through all of July will be when most everything ripens....here's hoping, anyway! I hope all of you are doing well with your gardens this year...it certainly is a different story than last year...so far, anyway!