End of summer garden

Or for us, weatherwise, it's the beginning of hotter weather. Even though this has been a ridiculously cool summer, the hours were long. It always seems to confuse the plants a little when it's hot but daylight hours are waning. Or maybe it's just me who's confused.

I always think these pictures seem utterly chaotic, but they are clickable to enlarge. In the first one, the more western side of the yard, you can't see the dying Elephant Heart plum tree, but you can see the grape vine (time to harvest!), and the mostly-dug potato bed, and the bursting-with-bells pepper bed, and the foolishly large sunflowers. What you can't see is the kale behind the sunflowers, and the used to be carrot bed. One day when I let the chickens out and forgot about them was enough to undo the painstaking sprouting I'd managed for them. So I'm torn. It's too hot really to try to get them to sprout now. Do I leave it or work to find another substitute? I'm dealing with this all over now.

This one has, believe it or not, even taller sunflowers. They're epically silly, and the only one the squirrels have found is an ornamental one. I'm willing to give up one or two! In this bed, from the back, pole beans and bush beans just coming along now, with a bed of Yukon Gold potatoes from the store behind them, an emptyish bed with clover and younger sunflowers in it, the paste tomatoes, the Early Girls and basil, and the dying summer squash/winter squash in back -- the butternuts look great, but not as productive as I would have wished! -- and there's a bed of teensy direct-seeded lettuce behind the sunflowers, along the fence. I'm giving it lots of TLC with bathtub water and hope they'll make salads soon. Visually behind the tomatoes and to the left of the sunflowers is a new seeding of onions. I checked Golden Gate Gardening and she said August would be okay, so we'll see. I'm not sure they're going to sprout, though.

I think the volunteer is a triamble squash, or maybe a Marina di Chioggia. Something big. I'll let it go because it's a lot of food if they set fruit.


I've never gone without food, and the garden really fills in most of our produce needs, but I have now encountered two people with not enough food to feed their children in my town. Both, unsurprisingly, were/are women going through divorce. I don't know the details of their financial situations, but I'm really glad I have extra food outside and put up to share. So that's why I'm letting any winter squash go right ahead and make more food.

I feel productive, too. But not as productive as these girls. They're loving the sunflowers from early morning to late evening. I'll have to squeeze in another honey harvest within the next two weeks.


But I do have troubling open spots in the garden. Too hot to start seeds, possibly too hot even for buckwheat or other cover crops. I'm torn between trying to get seeds started, even though it's almost a fool's errand to try to keep them wet enough, or just forking some compost over the tops and throwing some sort of mulch on there. I have some finished compost and more bunny poop. What do you think? I don't like bare ground; I have some time I'm not going to be gardening, but when I get back to it in mid-October, I don't want it to be all death out there. Any ideas for odd-season bare ground?

First things first

Life with small children (okay, less small than they used to be, but old habits die hard) can often feel as though it's all reactive. You try to anticipate, but really kids are just bags of immediate wants and needs. I'm pretty spontaneous myself, but I do like some planful time. It helps center me for the onslaught of my days. If possible, I like to get up before anyone else, the time I used to run, and now I read the paper. Then I take a walk in the garden. Sometimes I hope that it's going to be a quick overview, but often I end up harvesting, doing stuff, getting happily side tracked. Today was a seriously sidetracky sort of day. The best!

I'm tickled at the bursting bounty of my bell pepper plants. I know that they need fertilization to keep going at their peak, and I have a low-tech idea for that which I'll blog about if it works, but still, just think of all the yumminess coming up:


The potato harvest seems like such a high return on investment. Somewhere the weights of the planting potatoes have to be written down. Even though I don't mean to, a visit to the potato bed seems to sneak in at least once a day. I'm not going to repeat the red and purple regular sized potato plantings -- the red ones are only good for boiling, really, and it's not my favorite preparation, and the purple ones are very . . . well, purple. Not for me.

But the fingerlings? They're called "Red Fingerling" and "French Fingerling" at the store where the original ones came from, and the French are buttery and fantastic. Maybe tonight we'll taste the red ones:


Can you see the "European Bell" pepper under that Early Girl tomato? Neither can I. Note to self, tomatoes are space pigs. Give 'em their own bed.


A quick tie up of a big branch and some judicious pruning freed the pepper to have at least a little light and some hope of fruiting.

The volunteer squash is doing fine -- I'm going to have to start walking over it soon. Of course, depending on what it is, I might end up tearing it out. It will be compost, at worst.


Today is the tomatillos last. The municipal green bin is being emptied today, and since I won't compost anything with this much powdery mildew, I was waiting for room for the plants. Any tomatillos worth saving will go into another batch of enchilada sauce, and then we'll just call it a day. I'm not up to coaxing them along. Maybe some year I'll fight powdery mildew, but not this one.


The Cherokee Purples are like little happy surprises peeking among the foilage.


Yesterday I managed to mostly turn under the cover crop. Now I have to find out what was supposed to follow the buckwheat, soybeans, and clover. I'm sold -- now I just have to make certain that I've scheduled cover cropping in between rotations, and find a source for modestly-priced bulk seed.


Flowers mean that beans can't be far behind, if the beetles don't eat them all. Little pests.


The other bean bed is happier with some iron slug bait. I was finding too many babies half chewed. We replanted in the empty spots, but I bet there's going to be enough for the whole year anyhow.


When I was ready to go in the house, the basket was much heavier.


Ten minutes after going inside, a freshly beaten egg and enough butter to make me feel a little guilty made a breakfast to seriously savor. That's the kind of fast food I can get behind!


Squash blossoms, Cherokee Purple tomato, and some of the volunteer tat soi from a path. Now I get to think of lunch.

Greens Gone Wild

I was away from the garden for ten days, and it was the first place I went when I got back. What a difference a week and a half makes! When non-gardeners care for the garden, some things change without being noted, I suppose. Everything was bigger:



And some flowers had come into their own. I showed Cat how to make snapdragons "snap," and her brother showed her how it worked. Next we'll wear snapdragon earrings. I'm quite proud of these flowers, since snapdragons are tricky to start from seed. As always, though, I don't think there are enough flowers in the garden. Too many weeds, too few flowers. . .



A very chilly worker bee on an "Envy" zinnia. I love the pale green flowers.


The pole beans are gleefully climbing the sunflowers in two beds, which are reaching lofty heights. Unfortunately, some of them are also flopping over. I believe I may have to shore up that idea for poles. Oh well, there's always other years, I suppose.


I believe that the tomatillos are showing some powdery mildew or some such -- it's the same thing they got last year. Plus, they have all flopped over. It's as though someone gave the order, and the all hit the ground at once.


Both Padron and rainbow bell peppers are coming along nicely. I plan to spray them with a bit of fish emulsion this week -- and boy do I wish I had carefully marked each plant so I can see which should be fried small and which should be left alone. Perhaps they're marked on the master drawing.


And it's really summer, because the tomatoes are coming in to their own. This is the "step view" of the volunteer out front.


A ripe one peeks out beside the lime tree -- oh, I'd better check that tree too. Ripe limes sort of hide among the foilage, and the tomato is making getting in there a challenge right now.

Here's a good view of the restraints I'm using on the Early Girls, and the stubby paste tomatoes behind them.


Finally, finally, I was moved to do what I've threatened in years past and act like the tomato beds were jungle foliage to hack back with a machete. I have never been able to get myself to do this because it always seemed a sin to waste tomatoes. But the memory of giving away basket after basket of these beauties fortified me. This is the "after" picture, so you'll have to imagine he path full of Sungold foliage and baby green tomatoes.

The reasons I was willing to do this are lurking in the rest of the plants:


Time to cut and turn under the buckwheat cover crop. If this goes well, it's definitely something I'd like to repeat. Easy and abundant, and a good way to improve soil, from what I hear.
Right before I left, the second bush bean sowing went in. Thankfully, they're coming up well, Royal Burgundy close, yellow wax on the other side, and pole beans (using actual poles!) behind. I'm committed to liking beans more this year. Last year's crop wasn't very tasty, or maybe it was just me.


Another thing tried just before I left was walking along a back bed with some dried bracts of kale seeds in my hands, rubbing them over the soil. Apparently it worked. Easiest sowing ever. Time to thresh that bag!


Talk about urban sprawl! This is a view down the cucumber bed -- the tomatillos are flopping into that path too. I had been whining to anyone who would listen about my lack of cucumbers. That might have been a mistake, in hindsight. I'm looking up recipes for "overripe cucumber pickles" now.

Mr. H. recommended these little beauties -- Mexican Sour Gherkins. They needed better staking, I think - the plants are sort of impenetrable. Today I'm going to try a ripe one.


Pattypan squash are romping about -- I've gathered a bunch and now have to figure out how we'll eat them.


The Kabocha are coming along nicely, with leaves the size of umbrellas.


A gone to seed broccoli plant brought the chooks running. They know a good snack when it shows up.
And all over -- really all over -- are these uninvited guests. See it on the middle of this otherwise beautiful sunflower?


Yellow cucumber beetles. I'm going to have to resume my soapy-water patrols. The beans and sunflowers have perforated foliage from them. They're relatively easy to kill once they're found.

And this is what I ended up with -- a box of cucumbers and the final apples off of the Anna, chamomile flowers to dry, a handful of cherry tomatoes and old onions, a bowl of basil, and two plants' worth of red tomatoes. It's so good to be back.

Blahgging

I'm so behind in blogging I can hardly function. And it's not just updating my blog -- I love to do it, and I love to hear from people, but because I'm also behind in reading other people's blogs, I have to contend with the guilt factor.

Instead of catching up on blogs and leaving lots of insightful comments, I'm avoiding reading the blogs I most enjoy, because reading them and not commenting feels so incredibly rude, I keep planning to catch up later. . . and then summer hit, and well, "later" might be Christmas.

It's all good stuff -- lots and lots of work, many children, activities like today's berry picking, and gardening, of course. We had a small but intense heat wave that had me quite worried for a couple of days. I was draining bath tubs and siphoning rainwater to coax along baby plants and recent transplants, but fortunately the weather seems to have remembered its place, and we're back to milder days.

So, a summer overview first:




The sweet peas are down (you can see the "hay rick" load of them in the wheelbarrow), which made the garden seem more horizontal for a bit. I miss them, but some other flowers are starting. I don't think I planted quite enough though.

The pole and bush beans in the back left hand side of the garden made it through the heat snap, planted around transplanted sunflowers for poles. Here they are without their row cover on:

Because if the row cover blows off, say, a bird gets them:

Cherokee Purple and Sungold tomatoes are rocking along. The volunteer out front is probably a CP, and it's set fist-sized fruit. These haven't, but they're doing fine.

In the back, the herbs and summer squashes are rollicking. They liked the heat.

Maybe this will be the year I remember to fry some blossoms?

A semi-jury rigged support for the butternut squash. They seem to think it's an okay idea. I'll tie more ladder rungs on to it as the season goes on.

Also happy about the warmer weather are the cucumbers. This bed is nearly all Ohio pickling cukes, but along the left are three Mexican Sour Gherkins, just overtaking their teepee supports.


The tomatillos (visible behind the cucumbers above) are going to produce a bumper crop, I think. And they're so pretty. Tucked in there on one side are two Mini White Cucumbers, which I keep gently pushing back into their support cages out of the tomatillos.

Paste tomatoes got in late, but I assume that since I want to harvest them all at once and not use them fresh, and the tomatoes will cheerfully bear into November, it's okay.

Ellie has been tending her garden carefully. Yesterday saw the construction of irrigation channels. I have got to get these little beds either made bigger or put on a drip system like everywhere else.


Cat's bed has one of the garden's two strawberry plants.


And with that, we're off to a strawberry ranch. Jam tomorrow!