Garden Tour

Just a little picture tour of the garden in full swing.

The spring peas have begun their decline.  About half the plants have started to dry up and turn brown.  Though I am still picking a small handful of peas on a regular basis, I have decided to allow the older pods to mature on the vine until they are completely dry.  These will become the seeds that I plant in next years garden.

 

The carrot bed has finally been filled for the season.  The first of the succession plantings have long since been harvested and eaten and the following rows are becoming ready for harvest as if on cue.  The largest planting was this last one since I wanted the crop to be well established before the colder autumn weather arrives.  It fills about a third of the bed and will probably be put under a row cover when the temps start to drop to the low 40's overnight.

 

The onions still appear to be growing and I will leave them in this bed as long as the weather keeps calling for rain.  I'd like the bed to be a little drier before I harvest them to reduce the chances of mold.

The cabbages have recovered from their transplant shock and have started to grow well.  Hopefully they will be hardy enough to last until early winter.

The eggplants have recovered from their shock as well, though I am not sure they will produce much of a crop before the season is over.

The tomatoes are overflowing their cages despite my attempts at training them.  I have never trimmed my plants to keep them in their boundaries.  I figure every new branch is another potential fruit.

The celery are very happy in the shade of the chicken coop along the fence.  They have been putting out plenty of stalks and I need to start dehydrating them before they slow down their production.

The broccoli have been steadily growing and putting out many small side shoots.  Unfortunately the brussel sprouts in this bed are just loaded with aphids and it doesn't look likely that there will be any left to harvest.  I haven't pulled them yet because I figure they are kind of like a trap crop for the aphids so they won't bother the other plants around them.  Obviously the onion border didn't do much to repel the aphids, though I do think that the plants look less chewed on than plants I've grown in the past.

The lettuce bed doesn't look good anymore either.  The first plantings of lettuce have long since gone to seeds.  The succession plantings I have done since were all direct seeded into the garden and very few of them came up.  The autumn lettuce harvest is not looking very promising, though I will try planting a few more rounds before the season is through.

The pole bean tipis are working out pretty well.  The beans have had no problem winding themselves up the poles after a brief initial training.  The plants themselves are filling out well.  So well in fact that I am planning to use a different spacing for the poles in the tipis next year.

The cucumbers are also looking fairly happy.  Unfortunately they seem to be quite content to crawl along the ground rather than being trained to the trellis.  Next year's trellis will definitely involve some chicken wire so they won't have such a hard time gripping the surface.  For now I will just have to put up with constantly retraining them to the poles every few days when the wind knocks them down.

The yellow squash are still looking content though I have seen some squash bugs amongst their leaves.  One of the zucchini has succumbed to either powdery mildew or a nutrient deficiency of some sort.  Perhaps this variety of zucchini just doesn't do well in this area.  The plants started off life looking a little sickly and the one that died never did get very big.

The peppers keep chugging along despite being crowded by the pumpkins and acorn squash.

The dried red beans are winding down for the season and I should have plenty of seeds for planting next year.  These will become sprouts in the chicken feed and also be added to chili and soup if we have enough for eating.

The amish moon and stars watermelon has managed to produce one good size fruit (that I am able to find anyways)  I am going to give it a little more time to grow before I pick it, but we are looking forward to the sweet flavor of fresh picked watermelon.

I also came across a couple young cantaloupes or honeydew melons - I'm not sure which because the vines are so tangled in this area I can't tell where they stared from.

The dent corn is at least ten feet tall and has finally started to tassel.  I am glad that it tassels so late because that reduces the chances that it will cross pollinate with the farmers corn in the fields across the street.

This is the view from the corner of the bean patch.  I like the step effect of the crops with the short beans in the front.  The next step is the squash patch, followed by the millet beds and finally the dent corn.  The final bed holds the giant sunflowers, but the corn is so tall that you can't even see it from this angle.

This is the wall of giant sunflowers that you can see from the road.  There is one that is ridiculously tall and towers over all the others by several feet.  If I had to guess, I'd think it stands at least twelve feet tall.

Standing under it and looking up the towering stalk makes me think of Jack and the Beanstalk.  It looks like you could climb it right into the clouds.