The fun part of being away for (most of) a week is prowling the garden once I get back, to see how things are coming along. Yesterday was the first of what I'd consider a typical high-summer harvest, with lots of chard/beet tops, kale, and the first big meal from my jungle of bush beans. Also we're starting to get a few winecap mushrooms from the small bed we'd inoculated (on a substrate of wood chips).
These are the greens (that's oregano on the left, it was starting to bolt so I harvested a bunch of the flower stems to dry):
...and the beans, a few last snap peas, etc. There were actually a half-dozen cherry tomatoes, but I took a few straight in to my GF before taking the photo.
Here's the aforementioned jungle of bush beans. I've planted them more densely this year to see how that works: last year I planted four rows in a 4-foot wide bed, this year six rows in a 3-foot wide bed. Once they hit their stride, the weeds didn't stand a chance.
What you're seeing there is actually two beds with a walkway between them, though you can't really see the walkway. The nearer bed is planted with a yellow variety, Monte Gusto, and the farther bed with a green variety called Provider. They both bear heavily, and are currently just dripping with almost-mature pods.
Today or tomorrow I'll go back through those beds and harvest 4 or 5 times what I got yesterday, and I'll do that for the next month or more.
My French-style beans (Moscotte) were planted a bit later, and haven't caught up (you can see the original planting on the right, and the second planting on the left; I'd run out of seeds initially). A convenient thing with this cultivar is that the beans are borne above the foliage rather than beneath, which makes them easier to pick.
My snap peas are just about done but my shelling peas are just hitting their stride, and I'll be harvesting those soon. That will make my GF happy; she's had a strangely specific fantasy from her earliest childhood of sitting in her rocker shelling a bowl of peas while surrounded by grandchildren who call her Granny. The peas are the only part she didn't have yet. I've been putting my peas down the middle of a bed, and planting other things on either side. This one has fennel to the left and bell peppers (Red Knight) to the right. The first peppers are starting to form.
Tomatoes are coming along. These are my Black Krims.
They're an indeterminate variety, and the tallest of them are now up to my eyebrows.
These are melons; Sugar Baby (an "icebox" watermelon), and Halona (a cantaloupe). I don't know how they'll do, but I can cover them to extend their season when the time comes.
So yeah, things are coming along. Probably going to harvest my garlic this weekend, it's looking about ready, and then I'll replant those beds in something else (I haven't decided yet what that will be; maybe cauliflower and a second planting of snap peas). I'll cut my first head of broccoli this week as well; it's pretty small but this cultivar generates a lot of side shoots if you harvest the central head early and ultimately gives a higher yield/plant. That wouldn't work for a commercial grower, but for me it's ideal.
On a side note, for those who are interested, I interplanted my broccoli with marigolds this year because of their reputation for deterring the cabbage worm moth. It seems to be working; I've had to pick worms and hose eggs from my kale and cabbage but not (so far) from the broccoli.