Garden Update: Welcome to the "Zucchini" Jungle

My zucchini plant is growing out of control! It's pretty much taken oven my entire garden as you can see. Even after cutting back some of the leaves, I still had to purchase a (pink of course) garden tamer to try and tame it a few weeks ago. It's already already outgrown it (good think those suckers are stackable and could go as tall as my house if i needed) and I need to go get another one to save hope for the banana peppers just right behind---or actually below it now. As for the monster bush producing the veggies--there are a few that will already be ready for picking in time for lunch tomorrow!!! Picked, sliced, and dipped into ranch veggie dip!
But if you look to the right of the Z you'll see (or maybe not-ha!) my pickling cucumber plant. Just the other day there were little sprouts of baby cukes all over and to my surprise tonight...there's a handful of pickers already!!! I love these kind of cukes! Put a little salt on 'em and it's like a healthy crunchy alternative to potato chips! From the looks of all the baby sprouts--i will have a huge harvest! As long as they are picked young (3-4 inches) before they start seeding, the plant will continue yielding fruits all season long! If I don't eat them all, i might try actually pickling them :)
For the time being though, they added a nice little crunch and extra green nutrients to our healthy dinner tonight! We had (my fav) grilled redskin parsley potatoes, green beans, sliced cucumbers, and savory rotisserie chicken breasts. Good Golly Gosh it was delicious!!! :)
But on to the rest of the garden. We had a few good strawberries but then lost the rest of our crop to what we think is the chipmunk that's been hanging around teasing Baylie. Something had to be small enough to squeeze through the garden fencing. A friend told me to used a mixture of dawn dishsoap and water (1 part soap, 3 parts water) and spray the plants to keep the little bugger away but instead, I burned the leaves of the plants as well as the beans and pepper plant....i accidentally used concentrated dishsoap! Ugh! So i lost my pepper plant, it's there but not flowering as well as some of the green bean plants. As of right now about a 1/2 dozen survived, so we will see. Two of the sugar snap pea plants sprouted but never really grew and wilted away so i pulled them and in their place put a cute little snail to welcome me to my garden :) The banana pepper plants aren't getting a lot of sun anymore because the zucchini plant is being a selfish beast but time will tell what they will do. As for the heirloom tomato plant in the back right corner, it is also growing out of control--so much it's wire thingy isn't supporting the top of the plant anymore. But, we will save the tomato stories for tomorrow...yes stories!!

To be continued...