Harvesting

I haven't updated in a month, mostly because I spent almost half of August in Los Angeles, visiting my good friend Al! I had a good vacation there, going to the beach, riding roller coasters, and climbing some serious mountains. Meanwhile, I left the garden in the hands of my Mom, with a to-do list for her to do every day (she was thrilled). So the garden survived my absence, but it's amazing how much things can grow and change in two weeks. I have a lot of work to do out there!

















Here is my dog, Max, posing with all the pumpkins I harvested today. All of these are from a single volunteer plant that got attacked by everything: powdery mildew, squash bugs, and squash vine borers. Despite all that, it still grew five beautiful, big, heavy pumpkins! I credit that to several things: an early start (it sprouted in early May or late April), healthy, deeply dug, compost rich soil, and the fact that no squash has ever grown in that spot before. I hope these pumpkins last for a long time.

Sunflower heads. Drying and removing the seeds from these was a pain in the neck! Not too sure it was worth the trouble. Next year I will probably not grow an entire bed of these again, but instead just a couple in a flower bed for ornaments. It was fun to watch goldfinches eat the seeds, though.

Here's how the garden looked at the end of August. That is a lot of corn! You can't even see the tomato jungle from this angle. Since taking this I have removed and composted the sunflower stalks, pulled up the pumpkin vines, and mowed the lawn.

So much corn!

Here is the difference between un-pollinated and pollinated corn. Unfortunately, every single ear has been attacked by corn borers. That's usually not a big deal, because you can just cut off the topmost section of the ear and eat the rest. But sometimes they slice through the silks before the ear gets pollinated, resulting in this.

Nasturtiums, basil, sweet potatoes, marigolds, lima beans, carrots, chard, and beets, with pumpkin vines in the background. I think marigolds are the most successful thing I've grown this year! The sweet potatoes have lots of beautiful flowers that are only open for a few hours a day.

My strawberry patch is STILL sending out runners! I have to cut them out of the path every week. I'm thinking of devoting a second bed to them, because they're already so crowded in this one.

The tomato jungle! Clearly, pvc pipes are a horrible support, lol! I will have to devise something more intelligent next year (I'm thinking stakes).

I thought this was beautiful.

Everything here is from the garden except for the apple, which I put in the bowl to help those tomatoes ripen.

Siamese twin!

My fall seedlings, which have largely been a disappointment so far. Critters have been chewing on them almost as soon as they sprouted. =(  I've already had to pinch off multitudes of caterpillars and spray with Bacillus Thuricide. Then, something ate the lettuce seedlings right down to the soil. So I put them in this cage, thinking it was probably a squirrel, but today something ate even more of them! So whatever it is, it's small enough to fit through the bars. I've wrapped the whole cage in small deer netting, hopefully that'll keep things out. I really wish I could start these indoors, but I need a couple big florescent shop lights to do that. I'll have to start some new seedlings, but I'm afraid it might be too late for that already.

All but one of the butternut squash, and all of the acorn squash I've harvested this summer. Not tons, but it's something. :)