First harvest of summer

In late June we got our first harvest. 

The weather around here was wet and cool until a few weeks ago when it suddenly became extremely hot.  This means that our plants were somewhat stunted, but our ground cover of peas and spinach went crazy.  When it suddenly got hot the peas died back, and it is time to harvest them all.

Peas are great because they produce early and well, but also replenishes the ground for the other plants.  We froze some of these peas for winter (they will be good in stir fry) because we could not eat them all.

We had no such problems with the first tomatoes of summer.

These are actually only half of the first tomatoes of summer as the first we eat in the garden.  Tomatoes are some of my favorite plants to grow, as the store bought ones are extremely different from homegrown ones.  Tomatoes were bread to grow faster, and withstand shipping.  Unfortunately this also means they have less sugar and flavor, and are tougher.  Ours are sweet and juicy, and were hot from the sun.  I am hopeful that this is the start of a great harvest which will allow us to make sauce, frozen tomatoes and soup for the winter.