Garden - August & September

The garden has been doing great for the past month or so.

 

What's still going strong from our first planting?

 

From our original planting back in April, we still have tomatoes coming in. They have slowed down some but its still nice to get a few tomatoes each week for our salads. 

 

Peppers on the other hand are getting out of control.  We planted regular green bell peppers and they are doing well.  We just harvested a bunch and I diced them up and froze on a cookie sheet to have through the winter.

 

Diced Green Bell Peppers

 

We have lots of other peppers growing in the garden also.  Banana Peppers, Jalapeno Peppers, Cayenne Peppers & Thai Peppers.

 

We have shared some with our friends, frozen some whole and then I also have canned them cut up to use later on in the winter for pizza & nacho toppings.

 

Thai Pepper plants with lots of peppers still

 

We still have basil, parsley & green onions in the garden also that we are putting in our dehydrator to preserve.

 

We also have garlic that I planted.  Not sure if it's going to survive though.  It's not looking too well.  I've never grown garlic before so I'm not to sure what the tops are suppose to look like.  I just make sure to keep the area weeded and we'll see what happens.

 

Second Planting -Corn, Green Beans & Cantaloupe

 

The second planting of corn is coming along and we do actually have ears growing on it now. There isn't many stocks since some didn't grow and then some got mysteriously knocked down.  But there should be some that we can eat fresh.

 

 The second planting of green beans are doing exceptionally well.  I just did the first harvest of the plants and got 3 Walmart bags full.  Don'tcha just love my way of measuring?  LOL  I gave some to one of our friends and then I processed the rest for the freezer to eat over the winter.

 

Green Beans

 

We spread out compost from the goats that was ready before we did the second planting of the corn and green beans and oh my word did it help.  The green bean plants are huge this second time and have tons of beans on them!!!  I would never thought I would be excited about compost but I really can't wait to have enough to cover the whole garden next spring.

 

The cantaloupes are also doing well so far.  We have a bunch of little ones that are growing strong.  I just hope they get to "ready" size before it gets too cold around here.

 

Baby Cantaloupe

 

Third Planting -Zucchini, Garden Cucumbers, Pickling Cucumbers & Acorn Squash

 

The area we decided to do the 3rd planting in had our watermelons, onions, zucchini & squash in it.  The zucchini & squash plants have died off awhile ago.  The watermelon vines had started to die off so we decided to pick all of the watermelon. We got about 13 watermelons.  Some where ready and others were not but it didn't go to waste since we fed them to the chickens, who loved them.  We picked all of the onions also.  They could of grown much larger but I forgot to save some compost to cover the tops of the onions.  You see, as the onions get bigger they start to come out of the ground and you need to cover them with more dirt or they eventually stop growing.  I still think we got a very good harvest and we will use up all of the onions anyway. 

 

Red & White onions from our garden

 

So now with all the old stuff out of the way, in its place we tilled the area again and I decided to plant another set of zucchini, some garden cukes, pickling cukes and also some acorn squash.  It's kinda late in the season to be planting the cukes but I figured I had the seed so I would try.  All the plants have already sprouted, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that they will grow quickly.

 

Cucumbers

 

Hopefully they will grow and we will get some more harvest from the garden.  The days here are still nice as far as the temperatures go.  Still in the 80's during the day but getting down to the 60's at night.  If anything the night temps may kill them but we will just have to wait and see.