Late Summer Gardening

Oh, man! I have been neglecting my garden blog this summer! I have been taking photos fairly regularly, but have not always made the time to upload them. I admit, as  well, that my flower beds have not been getting as much attention as they deserve either.

Self seeded sunflowers, tall and stately

Mother Nature has been sporatic in her watering in the last  month and a half. Rainy days have been few which means more work for us keeping the flower beds and vegetable garden watered.

Speaking of vegetable garden, it has been an odd summer veggie-wise. For the first time that I can ever remember, the potatoes did not sprout very reliably. The majority of the potatoe hills did not grow at all in our the first attempt.  Not sure weather the wet weather in May and june caused the potatoes to rot, or if there was an underground rodent at work eating them.  Diligent husband re-planted most of the potato hills and we had a bit better luck with them sprouting, but there don't seem to be a lot of potatoes there under the earth yet.

The carrots, on the other hand have grown the best crop that we have had in years here! The beets are doing well and we enjoyed one feed of small beets so far which I pulled up in order to thin them out. I think we might be ready for another feed of beets now, though.
The swiss chard did well, particularly the 'Bright Lights' bedding plants.

We have harvested 2 small spaghetti squashes so far. There are still a few acorn squashes trying to grow but they seem to be quite slow. Not enough fertilizer maybe...

The tomatoes are doing okay in the veg garden, but not nearly as well as the huge monsters growing in the pots OUTSIDE the greenhouse. The 4 tomato plants inside the greenhouse are starting to ripen some fruit as well, but they are not as large.  The 4 5 pots of tomatoes on the deck are doing very poorly. I think the trees around the deck have grown so much in the last year or two that there is not a lot of direct sunshine on the deck anymore. The Tumbler tomato plant has done really well on the deck, though. We have been harvesting little mini tomatoes for 3 months now. It is a sweet treat to be able to  pick a few tiny red tomatoes to pop into your mouth as you walk by the Tumbler


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