Hello, and welcome to da garden, eh!
Well, here it is, the first of September. It seems that summer has come to an end, at least in this part of the country. It's time for my end of August, and end of summer garden journal report.
This has been an interesting gardening summer. We've had enough rain most of the summer, and a bit too much lately. The weather has been hot and humid more than average this year, which has been good for some plants, and not so good for others. I guess that's kind of how it goes.
Let's start off with a look at the side garden with the red potatoes. The potato plants here have died back pretty much completely now, and I'm just waiting for a dry day to start digging them. I also need to pick up the apples that have fallen from the tree next to the garden bed.
The zucchini plants at the end of the potato garden are still doing pretty well. I have several zucchinis that are growing on the 2 plants. I had 3 plants but the squash vine borers killed one of the plants. I sprayed a neem oil mixture on the main vine of the other 2 plants and that seems to have helped at least somewhat. I can see a bit of powder mildew starting on the squash leaves now, probably because of all the rain lately. I'm going to have to use neem oil to try to slow that down.
This apple tree still has a fair amount of apples on it, though they're a bit wormy. I didn't spray them this year. I think this is the most apples that this tree has had so far since we planted it. It's finally starting to produce apples.
This is the part of the main garden where the Yukon Gold, and the white potatoes were planted. As you can see, the plants are dieing back now. They could be dug at any time, although I'll probably wait until I have some dry days later this month. There's too many other things to do right now. The sunflower plants are due to the birds dropping seeds from the feeder in the plum tree next to the garden.
You can also see the Potimarron winter squash running out on the garden. They've done pretty well this year, especially for a fairly rare heirloom plant. The orange ones are mature, the yellow ones are still growing.
The corn is crazy this year! The stalks are averaging at about 12-14 feet tall, and the ears are at least 6-7 feet up the stalk. This is Bloody Butcher corn, an heirloom flour corn. This would obviously be good field corn for making silage for cattle feed. We use the corn to make hominy. I'll run the corn stalks through the shredder later this fall for mulch, after the corn is picked.
I may need a step-stool just to pick the corn when it gets dry...
The carrots seem to have done really well this year. I planted multi-color carrots so there's a variety of colors in there. I haven't pulled any carrots yet, but I can tell that there's going to be some big ones in there. Some of the carrots have started to go to seed, which is unusual for first year carrots. Perhaps it's the type of carrot.
The green beans are just about done for the year. I cut a bunch of the lower leaves off the plants when I was picking the beans a couple of weeks ago, to make it easier to find the beans, and to help with an infestation by tiny black bugs that resemble a beetle and hop instead of flying. These bugs have cursed me for 2 years in a row now. I tried neem oil on them, but it wasn't as helpful as I had hoped, so I've been using a pyrethrin bug spray, which works a lot better on them. The pyrethrin spray isn't as toxic as most of the synthetic chemicals, it's a plant based pesticide.
This is the bean trellis for the vining type Hidatsa dry beans. This is an heirloom bean that generally produces 4-5 large beans per pod. It will probably be a while before I can pick the pods, they need to dry out first.
These beans have done really well on the trellis this year. In the past, I've grown them on the edge of the corn patch so they can climb up the corn. The corn stalks tend to shade them out a bit, so they don't do as well that way as the could.
I did plant some beans in with the corn also, like I usually do.
This is where the compost pile is. Right now, it's hiding under the volunteer pumpkin plants that came up from seeds in the compost. These plants have been growing rather fast. I have at least 1 pumpkin in the plants, and hopefully I'll get a few more if the frost holds off for a month. You can see the one pumpkin in this picture, it's still green.
The tomato plants in the raised bed have done well enough for all the shade that they've gotten this summer. I'm sure they would have done better if they had more sun every day. It's a bit hard to see the tomatoes in the middle of all the marigold flowers. The marigolds may be my best crop this year. 😃
The big pots in front of the raised bed are empty now, I pulled out all the yellow bean plants a couple of weeks ago because they were pretty much done.
One more picture...
The tomato plants in the greenhouse have done pretty well this year. The plants are all getting yellow now, probably due to a lack of nutrients in the soil in the big pots. I'm going to have to replace the dirt in all the pots next year, this dirt is worn out. I've gotten a fair amount of tomatoes from the plants, but they could have been a bit better if the soil was better. Fertilizer only does so much good if the soil is over-used. The marigolds didn't seem to mind. Too bad that marigolds aren't a vegetable.
Well, that's all I have for this garden journal report, I hope you found it interesting!
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