Snow Fun

After a few days of cold December rain, we had a white Christmas after all! Christmas Eve the temperature dropped, making the rain turn to snow and sleet.

We only got about 3 inches, but it was enough for some fun in the snow Christmas afternoon. Mama and baby stayed inside where it was warm!

All bundled up.

Brrr! Cold faces!

Despite the frigid temps, Jacob didn't want to come in.

Hot chocolate was enjoyed by the two snow adventurers as soon as they got inside.

Garden Evaluation: bush beans, beets, carrots

Box 1, revisited: Fall crops
bush beans, beets, carrots, (+ annual sunflower and zinnias)
planted July 17

Bush Beans: 3 sq. x 9/sq
Variety: Blue Lake Bush
Yield: Plenty for eating fresh
Pests, problems, diseases: none, since they were planted after the Japanese beetles had mostly gone away.
Finished: beginning of September
Comments: Good flavor! I was impressed with the yield for the number of plants put in. Also, for planting them at the end of summer, they did great! We harvested several meals' worth before the end of the season. With the warm planting weather, they grew really fast. They did overrun the other fall crops, though. Would need to plan that differently next time.

Carrots: 2 sq x 16?/sq
Variety: Short 'n Sweet
Yield: nothing
Pests, problems, diseases: bush beans crowded them out
Finished: n/a
Comments: these came up ok, but I didn't thin them out. I don't think it would have made much difference, in the end, if I had. The bush beans were so vigorous that they completely took over the space. Will have to give these a try in a different setting next time.
Beets: 2 sq. x 16?/ sq
Variety: Detroit Dark Red
Yield: none

Pests, problems, diseases: bush bean takeover

Finished: n/a

Comments: as with the carrots, these put up little shoots, but then were completely overrun by bush beans. Maybe next time I'll put these and the carrots in their own box and see how they do.

Garden Evaluation: squash, cucumbers, peppers

Box 3: zucchini, cucumbers, cayenne peppers, tomatoes (see earlier post)

planted May 16

Zucchini: 1 hill / 9 sq. ft x 3-4 seeds per hill

Variety: Elite Hybrid

Yield: enough to eat fresh and enough to make several batches of zucchini bread

Pests, Problems, Diseases: powdery mildew

This disease came on pretty strong toward the end of the summer, cutting back yield quite significantly in August/September. Almost all of the big leaves had to be removed at some point. What remained was still vigorous enough to produce a few more squashes, but not nearly what we had been getting. You can see the whiteness of the leaves on the last picture for this box, below. Not sure if they just weren't getting the air circulation needed with the tomatoes crowding in the box, or what.

Finished: end of August

Comments: One hill gave us all we wanted for eating fresh and baking. I did a post earlier in the summer about it being a space hog, but to recap: finding a variety that would climb the trellis would be a definite plus, leaving more space for other veggies in the box itself.

Cucumbers: 2 sq. x 4/sq. (one square in the corner of each box, next to the trellis)

Variety: Don't remember, and didn't write it down. But I need to try a new one next time, so I hope I will recognize it by the description!

Yield: Enough to eat fresh and some to give away, while they lasted.

Pests, problems, diseases: of the 4 plants per square, at least 1 in each box wilted away completely before its time. Not sure if it was lack of nutrients in the soil from all the other veggies crowding in, or what.

Plus, not really a problem per se, but growing them up the trellis produced several that were deformed, as they would grow through the netting and then get tangled up in it as they got bigger. A couple of them had to be cut off the trellis in a few pieces.

Finished: end of July--they finished rather abruptly, which surprised me. I had just given some away feeling confident I would have more within the week, only to find they were done.

Comments: This variety produced foot-long cucumbers with a good flavor. I want to try a different variety next time--it was huge or nothing with these. Maybe one square with a different variety of slicers that would grow to a more medium size, and one square of the variety especially for pickling. I was hoping to do some pickles with the ones from this summer, but they were not ready for picking until they were extra-long, and I let that intimidate me.

Cayenne Peppers: 1 sq. x 1/sq.
Variety: Cayenne, Long Thin
Yield: Several little peppers, about the size of my pinky finger.
Pests, problems, diseases: Just overcrowding by tomatoes and squash. Once they grew above the tomato vines they started producing.
Finished: end of season
Comments: I used some of these in the salsa I made this year, and some in other dishes. As mentioned above, they didn't really start producing until August or so, as the tomatoes weren't letting them have any space. Used our old tomato cages to hold them up which seemed to work well (again, it would work better if they weren't also supporting stray tomato vines!) For hot peppers, we like these. I might be tempted to try jalapenos at some point...we'll see.

Box 4: yellow crookneck squash, bell peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes (see earlier post)

Yellow crookneck squash: 1 hill/9 sq. ft x 3 plants per hill

Variety: no special name, just yellow crookneck

Yield: for as big as the plant got, yield was a bit disappointing. We got an occasional squash from the plant--one or two every couple of weeks maybe.

Pests, problems, diseases: Lack of water? An earlier post mentions that after a week of rain there were several little squash growing, where we hadn't harvested any for a few weeks up to that point. I did water faithfully this summer, but perhaps the squash needed more than they got.

These also had powdery mildew problems, though not as bad as the zucchini.

Finished: end of August

Comments: as with the zucchini, I would like to find a climbing variety to free-up some space in the box. I would like to try a straight yellow squash, also, rather than the crookneck. The neck was always really tender, but the bulbous part would start to get mushy by the time they were big enough to pick.

Bell peppers: 1/sq. x 3 sq.

Variety: Banana Supreme, and The big Early

Yield: finally toward the end of the summer we harvested a handful of banana peppers. It wasn't until mid-to-late August that we got any bell peppers. We probably harvested 4 or 5 total of the regular bell.

Pests, problems, diseases: overcrowding by the tomatoes kept these from producing as much as they could have. They flowered regularly through the summer, but it wasn't until fall, when the plants were tall enough to peek out above the tomato vines that we got any peppers coming.

Finished: end of season

Comments: more space for these! Good flavor, but really no time to ripen from green as they didn't produce any peppers until August/early September. I bet I could be more successful with these next time, as the garden box layout will be planned differently to give them a bit more room.

Garden Evaluation: corn, beans, herbs

Box 2: variety

sweet corn, pole beans, basil, garlic, flowers

Planted: May 16

Corn: 3 sq x 4/sq.

Variety: 'Peaches and Cream'

Yield: 7 full-size ears, 1-2 little ones--enough for one meal

Pests, Problems, Diseases: We didn't have problems here, which I guess is unusual. Not sure if the dog kept the animal pests away, or we just got lucky. Really no trouble with bugs either. They did seem to need more support of some kind--they fell over in a strong wind and never seemed to go back up straight again.
Finished: mid-August
Comments: I'm not sure I'm sold on growing corn just yet--particularly in a square-foot garden. They did grow big and tall, and tasted good for that one meal. There's the problem, though. With a yield of 1 ear per stalk for the most part, you really have to grow a lot if you want it to feed your family. We do like corn on the cob, and would eat frozen corn if there was enough to process. However, you can get fresh corn at the Farmer's Market for cheap--3 for a $1.00 or something, in season. Or if we lived closer, Mom and Dad F. give it away! I could see it as a good choice for a kid's garden box: easy to plant, it grows satisfyingly tall, and yield would not be as important in that case.

Pole Beans: 2 sq. x 9/sq.
Variety: 'Blue Lake Pole Stringless' I actually liked the flavor of the bush beans better. If I try these again, I think I would do a different variety.

Yield: substantial amount, after the beetles left

Pests, Problems, Diseases: Japanese beetles! We didn't have any harvest at all until end of August/beginning of September, because it took that long for the vines to recover after the devastation of the beetle attacks.

Comments: These were supposed to be space savers because they grew up the trellis. They tried to take over the world! At one point I couldn't reach the beans to pick them because they had grown up the sunflowers and were way above my head. They literally wrapped around the sunflowers that were growing next to them and took them down! They also reached across the gap between the boxes and started twining around the tomato vines.

These seemed tougher and less flavorful than the bush beans, but I don't know if that was because I it took me longer to pick them or what.

With their unstoppable growth potential, I could see these being another good choice for a child's garden box, or make a stick tepee and let the vines go wild, and your little ones would have a shady hide-out.

Basil: 2 sq. x 1 plant/sq

Variety: 1 from Lisa, variety unknown, 1 'Spicy Globe Basil' (I mistakenly bought it thinking it was oregano--oops.

Yield: Great potential yield, if we had done something with them

Pests, Problems, Diseases: none

Comments: The Globe Basil did awesome. It grew almost 18 inches tall, and was very healthy, green, and bushy. We just didn't do anything with it. If I had cut and dried it, we probably could have had enough basil for the whole winter. I need to do better with the herbs next time around. It smelled good every time we were over there working with the other plants.

The little plant from Lisa did okay as well, but same problem. Just didn't use it.

Garlic: 1 square

Variety: unknown, gift from Lisa

Yield: nothing--the tops died about a month after they were planted, and I didn't dig them up.

Pests, Problems, Diseases: none

Comments: Maybe they will come back next year? We probably should have just used the cloves that we got from Lisa instead of replanting them.

Sunflowers: 2 sq. x 1/sq

Variety: 'Evening Sun'

Yield: Several large, pretty flowers on each plant. I didn't attempt to get any seeds from them.

Pests, Problems, Diseases: The pole beans! Growing these two together was a bad idea. As mentioned earlier, the beans twined all the way up the stalk, and eventually caused the sunflowers to bow down under the weight, breaking the stalk.

Comments: These got to be so tall! It was awesome! At least 7-9 feet--high above our 6-foot fence. The flowers were pretty, but the colors seemed kind of faded. I think I would prefer the brilliant yellow next time. The birds seemed to enjoy them.

Nasturtiums: 1 sq x 4/sq

Variety: 'Jewel'

Yield: n/a (although edible, I didn't try to eat them!)

Comments: Grew these from seed. They took a long time to get going, but once they did, they produced bright orange flowers throughout the fall months, adding lovely splashes of color to the box. I didn't get any good pictures of them in their full glory, but I quite enjoyed them at the end of the summer.

Garden Evaluation: peas, onions, potatoes

Box 1: Early Spring Veggies
Peas, onions, potatoes
Planted: March 27

Peas: 4 squares x 8/sq.

Varieties: 'Sugar Daddy' (stringless pods) and 'Super Snappy' (edible pods w/ huge peas)
Of the two, I actually preferred the Super Snappy--the pods were thick, sweet, and crunchy.

Yield: About 75% came up. Plenty for eating fresh, enough to use in a recipe now and then.

Pests, Problems, Diseases: None to speak of

Finished: July 23: harvested the last and pulled up the plants.

Comments:

Since we will only be here until the end of June next year, this would be a good crop to plant. We'll get to keep most of the harvest, and it will look good in the box for selling.


Onions: 6 squares x 16/sq. + 2-3 squares in box 2, maybe 5-6/sq., from Lisa.

Varieties: um...don't remember, some yellow and some white. Also, some I bought individually (they were already about green onion size) and I got one bunch of the tiny ones.

Yield: at least one orange basket-full, most golf-ball size, a few tennis-ball sized. We used them up in a 2-3 weeks.

Pests, Problems, Diseases: None

Finished: end of July
Comments:
I've since heard that this was a bad year for onions. I don't know, but none of mine got to be really big for slicing. Also, they were all extra strong flavor, when I thought home-grown were usually more mild.

Very easy crop to grow.

Next time I want to plant more, all of them the kind to grow into big slicers. Green onions are cheap to buy, and you can get the quantities you want without taking up a lot of garden space
(or having to continually replant). Also, the big onions could be stored for fall/winter use if we had more than we could eat in the summer.
I'll have to admit, I didn't do anything with the ones from Lisa. They are supposed to be hardy, so maybe they'll come back on their own next year and we'll harvest some.

Potatoes: 6 squares x 4-5/sq. + some in a bucket
Variety: Yukon Gold--tasty
Yield: This much (see picture), plus 7 or 8 more, plus one huge one today! (10/31)

Pests/Problems/Diseases: none except dog jumping on them.
Finished: end of July
Comments: Potatoes are fun to grow! Harvesting them is like digging for buried treasure--you never know how many or what size will come up, with no sign of the seed potato pieces you planted. The plants themselves got to be 3 1/2 feet tall, and were beautifully green and bushy until they got smashed by Diamond. We had to harvest these early this year due to afore-mentioned smashing. We eat so many potatoes, that I wouldn't mind planting an entire 4x4 box (or even more) of just potatoes. Especially since they also store well for winter use.
Potatoes in the bucket didn't do nearly as well on any front. Top-growth was scrawny and diseased-looking, and harvest was very small. They probably needed a lot more water than they got. So unless there's a really good reason to do otherwise, all potatoes will go in the ground from now on.
Probably won't plant next summer, as we won't get any of the harvest.

Winterizing

After another long week of rain, we've had sunny skies yesterday and today. So we finally could get some winterizing done!
1. Pulled out all dead (or nearly dead) garden plants and put them in the compost pile.
* we found one more baking-sized potato as we cleared out the one box! *
2. Mowed lawn and leaves, and added the mixture to garden boxes.
3. Put away all hoses, and random gardening stuff left out (baskets, etc.).
4. Took down camp chairs from porch and put in garage.
5. Took down/threw away remains of the wading pool.

Just need to get the hyacinths planted, and perhaps some last weeding done and we'll be all set!

Chore List, revisited

1. Move peony that's next to rose bush over next sedum. DONE!



2. Weeding! Front flower-beds done, and around rose bush.
Still need to weed rest of bed along fence.

3. Pick all green tomatoes, and prepare them to ripen (see next post).
Picked, but not wrapped in newspaper yet.

4. Pick rest of vegetables, if any. DONE!

5. Plant hyacinth and daffodil bulbs. Daffodils planted.
Still have to do hyacinths.

Ripening fall tomatoes

I found some great info from the Iowa State Extension office. I want to try the method where you wrap them in newspaper.



How to ripen end-of-season green tomatoes
When frost is imminent, mature green tomatoes can be harvested and ripened indoors. The fruit should be solid, firm, free of defects, full-sized, and have a greenish white skin color. Remove the stems, then clean and dry the fruit.

Individually wrap each fruit in a piece of newspaper and place in single layers in boxes or shelves. Store the tomatoes in a dark, cool (55–60° F) location, such as a basement or cellar.
Inspect the tomatoes periodically during storage. Discard any soft or decaying fruit. When the tomatoes begin to color, remove the newspaper and place them at room temperature (not in sunlight—sunlight softens them without ripening and strips them of their vitamins A and C).

To ripen tomatoes more quickly, put them in a brown paper bag with or without an apple.
As apples or tomatoes ripen, they give off ethylene gas. Ethylene speeds up the fruit ripening
process when confi ned in a closed bag.

An alternate ripening method is to leave the green tomatoes on the vine, pull the entire plant, and hang it upside down in a cool, dark location. (Obviously, this method can be a bit messy.) Harvest the tomatoes from the vine as they ripen.

It also is possible to protect plants by covering with old sheets, blankets, tarps, newspaper, or paper bags.

Chores this week & winterizing

That is, if it ever stops raining!

1. Move peony that's next to rose bush over next sedum.
2. Weeding!
3. Pick all green tomatoes, and prepare them to ripen (see next post).
4. Pick rest of vegetables, if any.
5. Plant hyacinth and daffodil bulbs.


Winterizing chores for after hard frost/more leaves have fallen:
1. Tear out dead vines/veggies and add to compost pile.
2. Add mulch to all flower beds.
3. Mow leaf piles and add to all vegetable boxes. Extras can go to compost pile.

Autumn color

Sedum, 'Autumn Joy'

These are "before" shots without the afters, so please don't mind the multitude of weeds surrounding this lovely plant. I'm working on it! The flowers started off pale pink, and it attracted flies, bees, moths, and all kinds of buzzing bugs. Now it's this lovely sunset red color, and the bugs are gone.
Once I've finished the weeding, I plan to move the peony that's crowding the rose bush over next to it (so maybe next year there won't be quite so many weeds to contend with!). So we will have a late spring show and late fall. Maybe I can also put in some annuals in the front for summer color--add a few daffodils or tulips on the other side of the bed and we'd be set for all four seasons!
This is the first time I've planted sedum, and I like it so far.

Tomatoes: Thoughts & Plans

I made and canned spaghetti sauce this weekend. About the same amount of work as doing salsa, but with fewer types of vegetables added in, the yield amounted to 3 quarts. It is work I enjoy, for the most part, because the end result is so rewarding: preserving the harvest so it doesn't go to waste, and having delicious home-canned food in the pantry. However, taking a whole day to can tomatoes for 3 quarts of tomato sauce seems like a lot of effort for not very much payback.

Here's what I've decided would make it better and more efficient:

1. Find a friend! This would go so much faster with 2 people doing it! Obviously, the cooking and hot-water bath times would remain the same, but the prep time would be cut way down. And perhaps we could even get a second batch going while the first was cooking, or something.
I think I need to move closer to mom, so we can be canning buddies. :) I just know she would be up for it.

2. Do more than one batch at a time, which leads to...

3. Grow more tomatoes of different varieties.
One thing I have found out about us this year is that we don't eat very many fresh tomatoes: 2-3 full-size per week, if we're in a salad or sandwich mode. However, we do eat tacos and/or spaghetti at least once a week it seems. So we would use home-canned salsa and spaghetti sauce if it was available.
Both times I made salsa, I ended up buying at least 5 pounds more tomatoes from the Farmer's Market in order to have enough to make up the recipe. I probably should have done the same for the spaghetti sauce. So the yield from our 4 Better Boy plants-somewhere between 40 and 50 tomatoes so far--is far too many to eat fresh, but still not quite enough to can.
Also, the roma or paste tomatoes are supposed to be better for canning, which makes sense, because they have meatier walls and fewer seeds, equalling less juice to boil down. However, they are smaller, so it would take more of them. Not sure if they are determinate or not.

Bottom line: Next time plant 4-8 roma, preferably with different harvesting times, to use primarily for canning. Plant 1-2 "Better Boy" or similar indeterminate variety for eating fresh and to supplement yields for canning. Perhaps 1-2 experimental types would also be fun--yellow, or green zebras--to add some variety.

Plans for cherry tomatoes:

I have not been as good about giving these away or finding recipes to use them in. The thought of skinning them all made adding them to salsa recipes a little daunting, but perhaps there would be an efficient way to do this--if so, that would be awesome.

Once again, we prefer the "Sun Sugar" yellow-orange variety to the classic red "Sweet 100." With just one plant of each variety, we have still had way more cherry tomatoes than we can eat fresh. The "Sun Sugar" hasn't yielded nearly as many as the "Sweet 100" this year, so for cherry tomatoes, I want to try planting 2 Sun Sugars next year (or similar variety) and not plant the red ones at all.

That adds up to a whole lot of tomatoes!
Square-foot garden translation:

I've already decided that it would be better to give the tomatoes the 9-squares each away from the trellis, and put a tall sturdy cage around them, rather than trying to contain them in one square each and train them up a trellis. The containment and training components just didn't happen.

However, with 4x4 beds, that means only 1 tomato plant per bed. This needs more thought, because that would still take most of the available space in just tomatoes, when the other space-hogs, like squash, would need their own room.

End-of-Season Bounty

Bush beans and cherry tomatoes
Pole beans

More tomatoes!!

The abundance of tomatoes is inspiring me to new canning endeavors.

Now I'm thinking I need to find a good spaghetti sauce recipe for home-canning. I picked 19 tomatoes yesterday, and I can see a handful more ripe already. I think 2 batches of salsa (20 pints) should sustain us for at least awhile. So, onward and upward!

More tomatoes...

Just when I was feeling so proud for processing all of our garden tomatoes... A few days after making salsa I went out to our garden and picked 15 more tomatoes! So I actually made salsa again, with a few more purchased from the farmer's market. Little did I know that if I had waited, I could have used all my own. This evening I picked at least 10 more. Now that I have 20 pints of salsa on my shelves, I'm just going to have to start giving away some of these others.
We are visiting teaching this week. Maybe I can bring some to each appointment.

Cutting Garden Inspiration

So I bought this gorgeous bouquet from the Farmer's Market this week, and I took pictures to try and figure out what all is in it so that SOMEDAY I can grow a cutting garden and make beautiful bouquets of my own. Is that enough of a run-on sentence?

Not sure about the tall spiky-thing.
Obviously some huge sunflowers and pink cosmos. I'm wondering if the orange and deep pink with white edges are maybe dahlias?
The feathery purple cone-shaped ones are sure pretty, too. And they are lasting longer than some of the others. I asked the seller what they were but he couldn't tell me.

The little purple balls are gomphrena--I grew them in a pot one year with petunias and they looked really good. They're a type of clover, I think.

I am not in the habit of cutting flowers to bring in the house, but I want to start doing it more. If I just had a vase full of flowers going at all times, it would be a cinch to pluck out the dying ones every so often and put in a new stem or two. Plus, this bouquet cost $10!! Way too much, especially since it's mostly dying off already, and it's only been 4 days since I got it. Another advantage of snipping a few from my own garden and trying my hand at arranging them.

Finally, some green beans!

About half of these green beans are from the bush beans planted in early August!

There's actually enough for 2 meals. Wow!

Plus more tomatoes.

Homemade Salsa

It was time to preserve all these tomatoes!

So I made and canned some salsa.

For the whole story, see the family blog.

It's delicious!

Corn Harvest

A total of about 7 ears.

I went out and picked them for our Sunday dinner a couple of weeks ago. When I told Mom that I had harvested the corn, she said, "On Sunday?!" Then I told her how much there was.

"Oh, okay." She and dad have something like 4 rows of corn, each 100-feet long, or something like that. Nothing like our 3 squares worth.

Sweet alyssum

Just when I thought these were dead, it has rained and they all burst into bloom again.

They are so pretty and delicate in this bed around the lamp post.

I almost like them better than the crocuses in the spring.

Front Flowerbed Work

Before: Front-right bed

I moved this hosta to the middle of this bed in the spring, to alleviate the crowding right there. Little did I know there were still a few shoots left and they grew into their own little plant.

So today I moved it (again!) to fill in a bare patch around the tree out front.

There's another hosta behind the euonymous bush that I also moved next to the tree.

Front-right bed

The hosta in the middle on the left is the parent plant of the one above.

Hydrangea in back looking lush.

Front bed, driveway side

I would like to move that hosta on the front right and add something else for a little variety in textures.

Between the hydrangea and the back-right hosta is a dwarf astilbe. You can't see it very well, and it is probably too small to be in the back. My only hestitation at moving it is the one in the other front bed tripled in size this year, and I'm hoping maybe this one will too if I give it more time.

Hostas around the tree.

I've just had annuals planted here in the past and they've never done very well, leaving lots of room for weeds after the spring bulbs die back. I'm hoping the hostas will be maintenance-free and content to fill in the space.

Still need to work on the other half of this bed--it's full of weeds (surprise, surprise!) and needs maybe a groundcover or something for summer/fall coverage.

Front bed with hostas gone.

I put the little mum there that was next to the tree. It was finally perking up and I hated to just compost it before its time. It will be easy enough to pull out come winter.

Yes! It's Raining!

I didn't have the energy or willpower to water yesterday, so I was banking on that slim 30% chance of rain this afternoon. And I hear raindrops outside now! Wihoo!

Powdery Mildew

Just cut off a whole bunch of the zucchini leaves this week--all infected with powdery mildew. We'll see if it survives the shearing. One bonus: it's letting extra sunlight in for the tomatoes to ripen.

Tomatoes are coming on!

The big ones are "Better Boy" variety. The slicers all have cracks in the top--I'm wondering if it's from all the rain we've gotten in the past couple of weeks.

Plus, check out those zucchini! Jason wanted me to let a few get big so he could make zucchini bread. I was going to give that monster on the left just one more day, then I forgot about it for a week! Maybe we'll get a double batch of bread out of these!

Plus, good news--the pole beans are flowering! Finally!

Jungle Garden Update

This is the first picture of my corn patch. As you can see, it's pushing 7 feet tall! The only plants taller right now are the sunflowers, which you can see behind the corn. The beans have been making a comeback since the Japanese beetle's have disappeared, but still no beans to pick yet!

The bushy plants around the base of the corn and beans are basil, oregano, and nasturtiums.

I planted the nasturtiums from seed and have seen one bloom so far. They may be one to either start indoors early, or purchase the plant.

Somewhere in there I might have some garlic and onions growing, but I'm not counting on it.

The beans and cherry tomatoes are getting friendly! They are growing together across the boxes. It makes a nice little tunnel for the likes of Jacob. I have to duck to get through.

Zucchini still going strong. We harvested 4 large ones this week! Jason made zucchini bread, and I made zucchini soup, and we still gave some away.

I did harvest our first peppers this week--no pictures. 2 little cayenne peppers the size of my pinky fingers, and 1 banana pepper. I don't think the bell peppers are getting the sunlight or space they need to produce. They have flowered several times, but I have yet to see any peppers growing on them. Admittedly, it is hard to see through the tomato jungle.

I guess the crookneck squash, above, just needed more water. Since it has rained so much this week, several little squash have started growing. We haven't harvested any for a couple of weeks now.

We harvested 2 more foot-long cucumbers this week, along with several more cherry tomatoes of both varieties, and even a couple of the slicing tomatoes. Loving this stage of the garden!

The lovely white bucket is the compost bucket for garden clippings.

New growth

The dastardly Japanese beetles haven't gotten the best of my rose bush yet! The purple leaves are all new growth put on within the last 2 weeks. Incidentally, haven't seen any beetles around since the temperature dipped into the 80's last week. Hooray!

Renovations

Box 1, Round 2

As my husband so astutely observed, I'm more of a planter than a weeder. So after the peas, potatoes, and onions were gone, I spent a little of my flower money on these bright annuals to take up some space, and planted beets in the space that was left. Much better option than bare ground, which would then fill with weeds.

Notes of interest:

The zinnias have already attracted at least 2 different kinds of butterflies! They would be a good choice for filler in my big flower beds next spring.

The sunflowers are looking great because it has just rained twice in the last couple of days, but they were really drooping before that. Another reminder NOT to plant anything in July, unless you plan to pour water on it every day. I figured they would do okay in the vegetable box, because I water those at least 2x per week. Thank goodness for this rain!

Look how awesome the beans are doing! Also, I didn't get a close enough shot to be able to tell, but the carrots and the beets have just come up. We'll see how this goes--it is my first attempt at doing fall crops.

Harvest

Awesome harvest this week! 2 huge cucumbers, 2 good-sized zucchini, last of the peas--there were more than I thought--last of the potatoes and onions, and as you can see, several cherry tomatoes. The red ones are the "Sweet 100" variety, and the yellow are "Sun Sugar." So far we prefer the Sun Sugar for their tangy, more fruity taste.