Gardening in Illinois

Gardening in Illinois is different than gardening in Houston.  In Houston, I remember digging up the ground and planting flowers at spring break which was in March.  That is considered much too early here.  Everyone is waiting for the late freezes even though the weather can be very nice.  For example, I remember taking the girls to pick our strawberries in Houston in March.  Here the girls and I picked strawberries for Mother's Day in mid May and that was considered early by some.  Nevertheless, I have had a hard time changing my planting schedule of twenty years so most of our plants still go into the ground in early spring.

In fact, we have already harvested one crop.  Mike and I have eaten all of our broccoli heads.  Even though they were all planted at the same time one plant grew broccoli way earlier than the others.  The others were so far behind that I forgot about them which turned out to be a good thing.  When I got around to harvesting them they were huge.  I made broccoli quiche with most of them but Mike just liked his steamed in the microwave.  

First broccoli head to grow.  

We are anxiously awaiting the rest of our crop.  There are green tomatoes and yellow buds on all the tomato plants.  All the peppers have small white flowers and the squash have big yellow flowers.  No sign of plants on the eggplants but I have never grown them before so I don't know what I should expect to see.  So I will keep fertilizing and watering and waiting.