The Wild August Garden

We're a couple weeks into August now, and the garden is definitely getting more and more wild. In past years, I've been concerned that we didn't use our garden space well enough, but this year we've packed the garden with so many plants that everything is starting to take over one another.

 

I thought we had a nice pathway in between the sunflowers and pole beans, but everything's grown up so much that we can't walk through anymore. In fact, the pole beans are starting to climb up the sunflowers too. 

Similarly, the pumpkin plants have gone a little bit crazy, growing underneath the beans and sunflowers. 

 

I'm a little bit concerned about our peppers, as our pumpkin vines are getting dangerously close to them.

Pumpkins and Peppers

I'm happy to say that our Cherokee Trail of Tears beans have been producing blossoms for a couple of weeks now, and today we were able to pick a nice handful of beans.

 

The Small Sugar pumpkins keep getting larger too.

 

We have at least 15 pumpkins growing between 10 plants so far, and some babies that we're not too sure about yet. 

 

And, our Ronde de Nice zucchinis continue to produce abundantly. I picked five on a single day! I estimate that we've picked around 20 zucchinis so far. I made about seven loaves of zucchini bread, and we cooked some to eat. I also blanched and froze some, and there's still three zucchinis sitting in the fridge.

We even gave three zucchinis to our dad and oma.They were surprised to see round zucchinis!

 

 We don't have any of our tomatoes coming from the garden, but I'll take the opportunity to show off some cherry tomatoes that our step dad has grown in the garden this year.

Megan

 

The July/August Garden

Late July and early August is a particularly exciting time for us, as it's the time that the garden really starts producing and really starts to get out of hand in a good way. It's a wondrous experience seeing the pole beans climbing high and threatening to start climbing our sunflowers, which we have planted in a short row just behind the beans. The pumpkin plants seem to never stop growing, and now we are seeing the first pumpkins expanding quickly on the vines. The Ronde de Nice plants have become extremely bushy and leafy, and are loaded with the little round zucchinis. And, the pole beans, tomatoes plants and pepper plants are beginning to set their first fruit/vegetables. Here are some pictures of our garden from late July to the beginning of August!

 

As it turns out, the zucchini and pumpkin plants don't need any help from me in the pollination department. Each morning I look at the garden and see many bees buzzing around the blossoms. Sometimes there's as many as three in a blossom at a time. 

 

Because of our many pollinators, we've been able to pick about six Ronde de Nice zucchinis so far, and I counted about fifteen growing on the plants the other day. 

 

Check out these beautiful zucchinis and our very first cucumber of the season. 

 

I just love seeing the plants loaded with so many zucchinis. 

 

Here's a picture of our largest Sugar Pumpkin so far. It looks bigger in the picture than it really is, I think, but it's still quite big and growing fast! 

 

This is another beautiful Sugar Pumpkin. I've counted about 21 growing, but I'm still not sure that they're all going to grow into full-sized pumpkins or whether they will abort. I'm pretty sure of about 10 of them though, as they keep growing bigger. 

 Our first Bulgarian Carrot pepper has set on one of the plants. There are lots of blossoms on the others. 

Purple Calabash

We are also seeing our first tomatoes setting, including our Purple Calabash tomatoes. They look so pretty at this stage. 

Red Zapotec

These are some of our first Red Zapotec tomatoes of the year. 

Federle

The Federle tomatoes are the most advanced. 

Purple Cherokee

 

Mystery Tomato

 

 

The above picture is of what we're calling our mystery tomato plant. We have two in the garden like this. Early in the season we noticed a number of little tomato plants popping up in the garden that we didn't plant ourselves. We are guessing that these are Sungold tomatoes, as our mom planted a few last year that produced prolifically and we're certain that many of them rotted in the garden, leaving their seeds behind. 

 

Our Cherokee Trail of Tears beans have finally started blossoming. I even noticed a couple tiny beans today. 

And last but not least, here's a couple pictures of our cinnamon basil and cilantro. I can see now that it's definitely worth growing your own herbs from seed. You get so much more that way. 

Megan