Summer finally came
HOT temperatures of July and August finally dried up the soggy ground. Harvest is coming soon! I cannot believe how amazing my tomato plants look! Those in the picture are over my head and I've topped most of them so they will put their energy into making fruit instead of more leaves & blooms.
We’ve been picking a few tomatoes & green beans. But in another week or two we will have a tomato harvest & I will be canning tomato sauce and puree for this winter!
I’m so excited!
After all the rain and canal digging we had to do I wasn’t hopeful for much of a harvest.
Volunteer tomato plants in the compost pile
I didn't get our compost pile dug up and moved because of the wet ground. It seems that the seeds from last year's canning found it the perfect spot to sprout and grow. Joshua is digging through the weeds to pick the sweetest cherry tomatoes! We will be digging this "black gold" dirt up and putting it on the square foot garden's this fall.
I love sunflowers. Last year a monster volunteer sunflower plant come up in a bare flower bed. It was over 7 feet tall. After it was done blooming, we dried the seed head and kept the seeds. These beauties aren't as big but they bring a lot of color to the vegetable garden.
The pepper plants are even looking nice but there just isn’t enough time for them to set any good size fruit. We ate our one bell pepper and picked two banana peppers. Not much for the crazy 25+ plants we put in the ground.
PUMPKINS!
The open ground in the garden is perfect for growing the viney pumpkin plants! There is one BIG pumpkin and lots of smaller ones that may catch up.
In the picture below, the hay is keeping most of the weeds back. I LOVE the deep mulch method of putting hay on the garden. It has cut my work by 75% at least.
Do we have weeds? As you can see in the bottom left hand corner - yes. But only in spots not covered well(8-10 inches of hay). I could pull them and put down more hay but I'm feeling lazy.
The weeds won't take over so I'm ok with a couple of spots being weedy where I don't have anything growing. I have planted broccoli, turnips, lettuce and spinach for our fall garden as well. Nothing has sprouted yet so I'm anxiously watching and watering. Plenty of sunshine and heat to make it happen!
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