August/September Garden

I can’t believe that it’s September! I took these pictures at the very end of August, so this will have to be my August/September garden update. Time has just flown by! I’m so glad we planted the garden for the summer, even with being busy with a baby. It has been a wonderful excuse to get outside.

Tomatoes

The tomato bed has been very productive, despite it’s sad appearance. We’ve had a lot of rain recently and some nasty tomato blight set in on my heirlooms. Luckily plenty of tomatoes set before then - it’s been raining a rainbow of pink, red, orange, yellow, green, purple.

Vines

Usually in early August the cucumbers start to die back, but thanks to the late start they made it much longer - until the powdery mildew arrived. The musk melons have been great as well until the mildew set in last week, we’ve had many sweet small cantaloupe-like melons and they’ve been delicious. The zucchini and squash were killed in July by the squash vine borer. By the time I knew about it, it was too late. Luckily we got to enjoy some squash before they died, but it was still disappointing. Hopefully this bed will do better next year - between the bugs and mildews it's in very sad shape!

A ripe musk melon - inside it looks just like a cantaloupe

Flowers

Two types of dahlias have been doing well, all the others either never came back or refuse to bloom. It’s been incredibly disappointing. However the zinnias and snapdragons have been doing amazingly well and I’ve had big bouquets all month.

Herbs, Carrots, Beans, etc.

We have more string beans than we know what to do with, as usual. It’s amazing how many beans these plants produce on the tower. We’ve had plenty of herbs to harvest too. I’m not sure how the carrots and radishes are doing since all the work is under ground, but we’ll see in the Fall.

Pepper Pots

I plan on doing peppers in pots from now on, it worked out so much better than last year being overrun by tomatoes! We’ve had a bumper crop of red bell peppers, sweet banana peppers, jalapenos and finally poblanos that just came in. The chipmunks, squirrels and raccoon have left them alone (I can’t say the same for my lemon and lime trees) so I never had to put any protection around the either.