Long Overdue Gardening Update

It has been far too long since I gave a gardening update. I have no real excuse; there has been plenty going on in the garden, but unfortunately, it has mostly been bad news. We’ll just say that for all my planning, this has probably turned out to be the lowest yield year we’ve had on record. Some of it was my fault, some a combination of poor weather with many extremes (i.e. 90 degrees one day, 70 the next, and 50 the following; heavy rain for a couple of days and droughts for a couple of weeks, etc.) But it’s time that I admit to the failures and share a few successes. Here are some pictures from the past month of gardening:

Our one and only summer squash we picked (I’m sorry that the picture isn’t that great.) I lost the battle with the squash bugs. I realized that the sprays I was using to kill the bugs weren’t very effective and the bees had disappeared from my garden (BIG problem!) So I ripped out all of my squash plants that were diseased, leaving one plant.

We’ve enjoyed having zinnias adorn our house in several spots. Did you know that they will last in a vase with water for 2 weeks without losing their color? In fact, their stems rot from the water long before the blooms start to fade!

Thankfully, my tomatoes have been doing well, under the circumstances. Here is a pair of “Siamese tomatoes” we harvested. And yes, they have split some, but we just cut around the bad spots and eat what’s good.

This is the reason I love homegrown tomatoes so much. Ours are on the left and the grocery store’s “vine-ripened” tomatoes are on the right. Do you see the incredible difference in color and texture? We’ve been enjoying many BLT’s and tomato sandwiches with OUR tomatoes.

I’ve harvested several Jalapeno peppers and 2 cantaloupes as well. Very sadly, it appears my cantaloupe plants succumbed to the cold snap we had over Labor Day weekend (the temperature dropped over 45 degrees from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning.) But some of my lettuce has come back and is enjoying the cold weather.

The remaining photos were taken over Labor Day weekend. You can see the tomatoes and peppers in this picture. I have some Bell peppers which are growing rather slowly. I’m hoping they ripen before the first frost!

My very sad melon patch. I should just rip them out, but I was hoping maybe somehow they would revive. I doubt that will happen at this point. You can see a few new cucumber plants in the foreground. I thought perhaps I’d get a late crop since we pretty much lost our first crop. They probably won’t ripen before the first frost, but I figured I haven’t got anything to lose! I also planted a second crop of spinach, but I think the seeds were indeed bad because I haven’t seen a sign of anything growing.

My lone squash plant on the left and my dying zucchini plant on the right. I have no idea why these two seemingly healthy plants died practically overnight. The plant in the pot is catnip which I put there in an attempt to deter the squash bugs. So I will probably clean out the dead plants and prepare the bed for composting over the winter.

The only thing that has really thrived has been my zinnias. Too bad they aren’t edible! But at least something is cheery in my garden.

I also had to pull out my nasturtiums because they were infested with red ants. As you can imagine, that made it interesting to pull out and dispose of the plants. J I’ve been drying LOTS of herbs and using them fresh as often as I can. I bought a second catnip plant back in July and also a chocolate mint plant. The chocolate mint plant smells amazing, and I look forward to using it soon.

My gourds were in the same bed with the zucchini and squash, so the plants were killed by the squash bugs. I harvested the gourds that were good and they’ve been adorning our table for awhile now. They turned out quite pretty, but I’m not sure that I’ll grown them next year. They take up a lot of space and you can’t even eat them as far as I know.

Here is the harvest tally of this year so far:

Lettuce (weight): 1.3 lbs

Spinach (weight): 1 oz

Nasturtium blooms (#): 33 (finished producing on August 26)

Early Girl Tomatoes (#): 14

Sweet 100 Tomatoes: (#): 65

Chocolate Cherry Tomatoes (#): 21

Tomatoes (weight): 6.4 lbs

Summer Squash (#): 1

Summer Squash (weight): 12 oz

Cucumbers (#): 11

Cucumbers (weight): 4.3 lbs

Zucchini (#): 1

Zucchini (weight): 15 oz

Gourds (#): 10 (Done producing August 26)

Gourds (weight): 1.5 lbs (Done producing August 26)

Cantaloupe (#): 2

Cantaloupe (weight): 1.6 lbs

Jalapeno Peppers (#): 4

Jalapeno Peppers (weight): 2 oz