August Garden Update

This has been a great year for the garden. We haven't had good gardening weather like this since the first year we built it. That was a very good year.

Vines

I've never seen cucumbers do this well before - even the first year we planted. The entire trellis is thickly coated in vines and for mid-August there are so many healthy leaves. Usually by now there's a lot of powdery mildew and die-off. We have so many cucumbers I barely know what to do with them all. It's been the best year for cucumbers ever. The carrots are still growing well. The musk melon was off to a very slow start - it has just started flowering so I'm not sure if we'll get any melons. The watermelon has been growing like crazy and we have several decent-sized melons but I'm having a hard time keeping them from rotting. Even the melons hanging on the trellis start to go black on the bottom. We've had one almost ripe one we tried to salvage, but so far no real fruit.


Tomatoes

The tomato bed is a sort of paradox. The plants themselves are not doing very well. They've been sick with blight - lots of dead leaves and limp branches. However we've had a ton of tomatoes. TONS. Even though the plants look terrible, there have been lots of flowers and fruit. All of the plants have been producing prolifically - we've had a wider variety of heirlooms in larger quantities than any other year. It might look terrible but its been delicious.


Beans, Herbs, Lettuces

The green beans have been plentiful, I didn't even plant them all the way around the tower and we still have a ton. The rainbow swiss chard has been thick and healthy (and beautiful in all the colors!). The lettuce shot up and flowered, I need to pull it up to make room for a fall planting. The oregano and thyme are doing well in the herb section, but my basil completely died and dropped all its leaves. It's funny - last year was a terrible year in the garden for most things, but the basil was so happy. This year most of the garden has been prolific but the basil died.


Flowers

The flower garden has done well. The zinnias are plentiful (so many beautiful bouquets!) and taller than me. The dahlias are doing well, plenty of blooms. I need to plant a few more next year so I have more. The snapdragons did not do well and are pretty much dead. The two sunflowers are taller than the garage. They are ridiculously tall, it's hard to capture in a photograph how tall they are. The stalks are so thick, I've never planted sunflowers before and it's definitely a fun experiment!


Fruit & Peppers

The blackberries are now winding down. They were very tart but perfect for jam! The brown turkey fig tree (that I thought was dead) is covered in little figs. Some of the citrus fruits (1 lemon, 1 lime) have ripened on the deck in the pots. The peppers in the pepper pots are also doing well - the bell peppers are big and the jalapeños are plentiful. It's really been a good year all around.