State of the Garden - August 2008

2008 has been a big year for our small garden. First, Mark put in four 10'X10' raised beds adjacent to the raspberry patch. Second, he built a split rail fence around the now-combined vegetables and raspberries to keep the critters out...



because this is what happens to healthy cucumber plants if you have groundhogs and no fence to keep them out.



But, along with misfortunes in the garden come surprises such as the three very prolific butternut squash plants that are growing out of the compost pile. I have a really good recipe for butternut squash soup which I will share if these make it to harvest time!



Assuming nothing happens to the tomatoes, it looks like we'll have a bumper crop although they seem to be taking their time ripening. I planted 30 tomato plants.



Half of the tomatoes are these Romas which are great for canning and tomato sauce.  I also have eggplants which look completely sad (for the 3rd year in a row!) The four-striped bug, after doing a job on the daisies are now lurking about and multiplying on the zucchini and pumpkins. I'm holding my breath, hoping that they won't completely destroy them. I planted red onions and leeks and it looks like the leeks will be small and the onions seem to have disappeared entirely - I have no idea what happened there! The green beans are in and we're doing our best to consume them, although I am getting some not-too-subtle clues that the kids simply will have NO MORE beans! So that's the State of the Garden for now. It's pretty amazing considering that all of the vegetables except the onions and herbs were grown from seed by my own two hands! My babies are growing up! To remind you of what they looked like as babies, see my previous post here. I can't wait until harvest time!