Summer Vegetable Gardening

Here in upstate New York, we are having a very hot and dry summer. Everyone's lawns are even turning brown. Farmers are even hoping for rain, so that corn and the second cutting of hay will grow.
My summer hobby is vegetable gardening. I like to grow a wide variety of vegetables. This year I'm growing a couple different kinds of lettuce, arugula, spinach, peas, green beans, carrots, radishes, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, corn, popcorn, butternut squash, pumpkin, watermelon, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and beets. Everything seems to be growing pretty well. Probably because I've been making an effort to water the garden.
The boys father stopped at a garage sale and bought a box of irrigation supplies for $20. The guy running the garage sale used to install lawn sprinkler systems. There were tons of things in the box, including hoses, nozzles and sprinklers. His find has been a big help with keeping the boys cool and the garden watered.
I've been trying to get the boys to develop an interest in gardening by helping me, but I'm not having much luck. The youngest one did help me plant seeds. He's not much of a vegetable eater, so I was hoping gardening would help with that too. He will eat carrots and peas so far. I'm hoping that once the green beans and tomatoes are ready, he will eat those too. Tomatoes are the only vegetable my oldest son will eat. I've resorted to the sneaky chef method of pureeing vegetables and sneaking them into the foods they will eat. Hopefully, I can phase that out someday. With all of the crap in store bought food these days, growing their own organic vegetables is a skill they are going to have to learn if they want to stay healthy.

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