August Garden

It’s been a really wet summer. We’ve barely had to water anything, the grass is very green and we’ve seen a lot of mushrooms in our garden this year. This hasn’t been ideal for the blight-sensitive plants in the garden, but it is what it is.

Tomatoes
The cherry tomato plants are the worst hit from the blight. They are producing and dying in equal parts, it makes me sad but we’re enjoying what we do get. All of the bigger tomato plants have come in at once and while we had a ton of tomatoes last week, suddenly there are very few left. I much prefer a summer where we get a few tomatoes every couple of days over a long period of time instead of too many in a few short weeks. They are delicious though and I feel quite fancy making grilled tomato stacks in red and yellow.

Cucumbers, herbs
The cucumber vines are thickly covering the trellis and don’t seem to want to stop despite some mild blight that’s setting in… but I’ve only had 2 cucumbers this summer! There are two more growing but for the number of vines and flowers you’d think that we’d have a bumper crop like other years. It’s kind of strange to be honest!

The oregano is in the same spot it was in last year, which means it’s now trying to take over the entire bed. The thyme is also doing well. The basil was doing well until this month and now it’s yellow and sickly and I think it’s also affected by the wet weather. The rest of the craziness in this bed is actually 5 radishes I neglected to pull up. They went nuts! I ended up pulling them up after I took these pictures… the flowers actually look pretty in a vase mixed with zinnias!

Flowers
The flower beds have held two surprises - cherry tomatoes from old seeds and a cucumber vine from old seeds! I’ve let them kind of amble through the flowers and grow, they haven’t been to destructive so far so it’s kind of fun - Oliver seems to really enjoy it.

The flowers are doing great back here. The alyssum is a thick carpet of snow, the red impatiens are big and happy. The zinnias are tall and I’m picking bouquets a couple times a week, I seem to always have a vase of fresh flowers on my table (which I love and it makes me so happy!).

Fruits elsewhere
I’ve never seen a blackberry harvest like this one. BUCKETS of blackberries. I’m giving them away, we’re eating them, I’m making blackberry sorbet 2+ times a week right now. We pick them using the largest colander we have as a bowl every couple of days.

Also the Chicago Hardy fig has little figs on it! Hopefully we will get another crop of figs this year before frost.

Everything else in the yard is finished for the season.