Doesn't a mid-summer garden just make your heart and mind happy? It does us. Just look at all the abundant growth! Path mulching is helping tremendously with time preservation and is allowing plants to grow where they want.
Lemon squash is doing well and providing us with many fruits.
Melons are growing!
Steve's sister passed along garden huckleberry seeds to us and the fruits are setting now. We will see how they taste in some jam. Anyone else grown these before?
Interplanted amongst the garden are many flowers for pollinators. We planted tropical milkweed, an annual in Ohio, for monarch caterpillars and the many other insects that love milkweed nectar. Much of our common milkweed is setting seed pods due to the drought, but the tropical is just getting ready to flower so it should be a nice late season nectar source.
The cosmos is absolutely hopping with pollinators....and it makes us happy. So sunshiny!
Chamomile and salvia....
Check out the vining on this melon...wow!
Steve found this okra in our seed catalog this past winter and thought we should grow it for its awesomeness. It is incredibly beautiful...
and incredibly large. Who knew? Not us, as you can see the tiny garbanzo plants struggling underneath the massive foliage.
When do you harvest the pods? Anyone have great recipes for lots of okra?!
Soybeans grown to eat as edamame are doing well. The field behind us is in corn this year so we don't have to worry about GMO contamination. Another week or two and the beans should be swollen enough to eat. YUM.
Hmmmm....where did the pathways go?
Butternut squash are coming on. We hope they have time to mature before squash vine borer damage is too extensive.
It's nice to linger out here....
More melons...
Sweet dumpling squash...
Delicata squash...
Beautiful looking winter squash though they will probably not have time to mature due to squash vine borer. These vines look pitiful. We picked squash bugs, we removed borer larvae, but alas it is as it always is...the vines are not happy. SO...
we did another planting to see if we can disconnect our plants from the lifecycle of these pests. If they don't have time to mature, we will start seed indoors next year and set the plants out later than normal and will also row cover and hand pollinate. This situation is hard. The squash vine borer moth is so cool and we cannot stand killing them so the only option is to try to work around them.
Lemon cucumbers are growing quickly now. Jennifer loves lemon cucumber sandwiches and is anxiously awaiting their ripening.
Steve's sister and brother-in-law shared strawberry plants with us this year so we now have 3 beds planted. The plants are a bit peaked with this heat & drought, but they are sending up new growth so that's a good sign.
Leeks anyone? We have an incredible abundance.
Onions are growing well this season. We made it an entire year without buying onions, tomatoes, peppers and potatoes because we had our own and stored them through the non-growing season. That is incredibly satisfying. We've harvested one bed of potatoes for eating now and the rest of the plants are dying back to be harvested for storage for this coming winter. Just this summer, we've removed ourselves from grocery garlic and expect to last till next growing season on that too.
Jalapenos anyone? Yesterdays haul....
Happy gardening!
HOLY SMOKES! Your garden is AMAZING you two! Wonderful! I'm so jealous on the leek front, mine were a bust this year. Not sure why the other things growing in the same bed are doing very, very well. And are the squash funny? I've got Baby Pam Pumpkins EVERYWHERE out there, they are even growing through the fence. We did to corn this year, but I think next year, we will move that outside of the enclosure and put the pumpkins in with it, two of the three sisters together. Loved the tour of your garden, it's looking fantastic and you're gonna be well set for the winter freeze. Congratulations!! ~Vonnie
ReplyDeleteIt all looks so yummy! In my little urban garden I just harvested my first three tomatoes, but lots more are coming along. Today I plan to pull some beets and dig a few potatoes. I had a nice garlic harvest and the peas are finishing up. No cukes, yet, but they are blooming. Yes, I too love this time of year!
ReplyDeleteI planted the same okra! Had a great crop of regular (Clemson spineless) last year, and pick them when they are on the young side (and not so "hairy").I make stewed okra all the time, and it's a great way to use up some of the garden tomatoes, too. http://bonsavant.blogspot.com/2011/08/stewed-okra-and-tomatoes.html
ReplyDeleteEverything looks awesome! I'm growing some melons for the first time this year, even though we don't really have the room. I decided to just let them ramble out of some beds at the back of the yard and onto the grass. We'll see what happens. Happy days are here!
What a variety.... looks well taken care of... your efforts are congratulated.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, you have everything. I cannot wait to have a smaller version of this garden one day.
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