Last week, in the garden. (August 8.)
Last night, in the garden.
(If you're keeping garden notes and photographs and want to share it with the rest of us, do leave a comment with a link so that we may take a stroll through your garden too! It's a delight to see what and how things are growing all over, and to read the comments with such great gardening wisdom! Thank you all for continuing to share in this little project.)
It really feels like August in the garden this week! Cool, comfortable, and a jungle of plants and weeds that indicate a growing season beginning to wind down. The way the sunflowers wave in the breeze right now is something so unique to this time of year - it's lovely to watch and listen to.
The most exciting harvest this week has been the second half of the garlic, which is now all curing in the garden shed. The softneck was all harvested a few weeks ago, but the hardneck ready just now. And once again, I find myself marveling and in love with that crop that slowly grows, touching all four seasons and almost making it to one year in the ground. Last year we grew enough garlic to make it all year long, which considering how much garlic we use, pleased me so much. It looks like this year is about the same amount. I'll buy our seed garlic at the Common Ground Country Fair next year, and maybe plan just a little bit more this time so that the following year, we can grow enough to eat and to plant both.
If you ask the kids, they will tell you that the cucumbers are the most exciting harvest this week. With a slow start, and fewer plants producing, it isn't a huge year for cucumbers for us. Pickles might even be out (because when it comes down to it, if I can only preserve one thing with cucumbers, it'll be cucumber relish). But we're not being shy about eating what comes out of the garden now. Sliced with some tomatoes and a little bit of vinegar and salt? Love. Though the kids prefer munching on them straight from the garden, whole. Love, love.
Our tomatoes are coming along nicely, I am happy to report. Some early blight happening all around, what with all that rain we had early in the season, but I think the plants will produce regardless. Heavy pruning this year (all suckers, and everything below the first flower) means that they're high and tall and not the jungle they can sometimes be, those tomato plants. And I might venture to say that the planting of tomato-basil-tomato-borage (and repeat) along the rows might just be helping repel the pests that usually bother the tomatoes. We've seen hardly more than a couple of hornworms, much to the disappointment of Adelaide who says her chickens are sad without them.
There are some new seedlings coming up for cooler weather crops we planted recently - more beets, a second round of brocolli, a bit more kale. But unless some cold frames or that greenhouse is built in a jiffy (you never know...), I think we're now done planting this season. Until, of course, it's time to plant that garlic. Round and round it goes...
