End of Season

Butternut squash

Today is the first day of Autumn.  I was hoping my baby would be born today since it's my favorite season, but no luck.  As for my garden, there's not much tending that can be done when you can't even see your feet, never mind bend over.   I've managed to get a few 15-minute stints in here and there but didn't expect much.  

Overall, a few things did well: lima beans, purple podded pole beans, green beans, cucumbers, butternut squash, and okra.  We've been up to our ears in okra.  

As for things that did horribly (and when I say horribly, I mean it.  There was no middle ground.  The crops either did so well I couldn't keep up with it or they completely flopped) I got one eggplant that got eaten by something before I could harvest it, about four cherry tomatoes, about a handful of semi-good tomatoes, and no green peppers.  The carrots were worthless by the time I pulled them up. 

Here's some pictures:

Here's the carrot tops.  They look great, right?  Not really.
The longest one was about 1 inch long and I didn't even want to try to eat it...

An okra flower

Cucumbers did really well!

I got a few Baby Boo Pumpkins before the squash borer bugs destroyed the plants.  
White pumpkins have a special meaning to me because they were the
table centerpieces at our wedding.  

Lima beans and okra

More pests!

Tomato Hornworm

Aren't they ugly??!!

Bright Lights

It's my favorite time of the summer - my Bright Lights Cosmos are blooming!

War and surgery

There's been a few times so far this summer I've walked outside, knife in hand, with a determined looked on my face.  As I'm leaving, I say over my shoulder, "I'm going to perform surgery."  My husband knows exactly what I'm doing: waging war on the horrible squash borer bugs.
I didn't know anything about these evil creatures until three summers ago.  I planted cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, zucchini, and watermelon.  In the course of a few days I went from a lush, jungle-like garden to something that looked like this:

After many (embarrassing) tears shed over the devastation of my plants, I did some research.  I love the internet for its visual advantage.  I discovered that there was a squash vine borer grub that had hatched from the eggs laid by this ugly flying creature:

and had bored into the stem of all of my hollow-stemmed plants in the squash family.  It chewed its way up the stem, getting fatter and fatter as it went along.  I cut open the stem to take a look.  Sure enough, this is what I saw:

An ugly white grub with a black head.

These borers work so fast that you have to be on your toes if you want to defeat them.   Each year I get better at spotting the signs of their arrival.  Usually I notice this first: 

Frass on stem

When I see even the slightest hint of frass, I get my knife and go out to perform surgery.  Cutting carefully lengthwise up the stem and prying the stem open usually exposes the grub and you can dig it out and then cover up the plant stem with dirt.  Then water well!  I have performed surgery on all my squash, zucchini, pumpkin, and cucumber plants this year at least twice and so far I have only lost a few plants.  They probably don't produce as much as they would if they didn't have a gaping hole in the stem, but I guess it's better than nothing!

Today's harvest

cucumbers, beans, lima beans, okra, squash, zucchini

Time to shell the lima beans!

Christmas Lima Beans 

Big!

Anyone have any good lima bean recipes they can share?

Purple Podded Pole beans

These purple podded pole beans turn green when you cook them.  They're a bit stringy and tough
when they get too big so I probably won't be growing them next year.  But they look so cool!

Hollyhocks

Holy Zucchini!

This is what happens when you go away for a week and leave your garden.

 The pictures really don't do their monstrosity justice.   Would it even taste good?

What the heck are these?

Does anyone know what these are???  They have invaded our yard:

I would love to know if they are harmful to the trees in our yard or harmful to my plants.

Promising growth

I'm excited about the things that are starting to change and grow in the garden!

Does anyone have experience with growing raspberries?  When will the flowers produce fruit?  Will I need to cover it with a net to keep the birds from getting it? 

To spray or Not to spray?

I have been doing a lot of reading about insecticides lately.  I use only organic ones, but I've read that if you let your garden 'settle' for a while without any insecticides it will eventually self-regulate.  Since insecticides kill both the unwanted bugs and the beneficial bugs, over time the beneficial bugs build up to the point where they are taking care of the unwanted bugs.  In order for that to work, though, you have to have optimal garden conditions.

I'm wondering if anyone out there has actually let their garden self-regulate and had it work?  Any comments on how/when you use insecticides?  Any suggestions would be great...

Composting

I have gotten a lot of questions about my composting system lately.  It sounds kind of complicated but once you make your own system work for you it's quite easy.

First, I have a jar on my counter (that I got at Home Goods or similar store) with an easy-opening lid that I put my compost items in.  I put in all of my kitchen scraps minus fats and meats.

Once this jar is full I dump it into a pail I keep outside next to the porch steps.

Then once that pail gets filled or the stench becomes unbearable I haul it down to the compost pile.

It's a simple three-sided structure made out of stakes and chicken wire.  My husband takes a pitchfork to it once a week or so.  We add leaves in the fall and other garden refuse at the end of the season.  I don't worry too much about the ratio of things in there - it seems to do just fine on its own.

Melon-looking thing growing

I always get things that grow in my compost bin.  I learned the hard way that it's best not to transplant these things to the garden, however hard it may be to resist that temptation.  The reason is that most of the seeds that grow from your compost could be harboring diseases, are a cross-breed, or are not a particular cultivar that would be appropriate to grow in your climate zone.  The first year I had the compost pile I was so excited to find a melon-like thing growing that I planted it in my garden.

Well it produced a lot of vines that took up a lot of space and nutrients, but the small melony-looking thing that it made basically was rotten mush inside.  Yuck.

I learned my lesson

2011 new growth

This year my seedlings were much more contained than last year.  I took orders for plants instead of just planting a bunch and letting people choose what they wanted.  This helped a lot.

Rebecca planted sunflower seeds. 

My friend generously gave me these slate pieces.  I moved the bench over closer to the kids' play area.

The hollyhocks survived!  Hopefully they will flower this year.

Rebecca's cherry tomato pot. 

I wanted to add something to the back shed to spruce it up a bit.  I put some morning glories into the pots and made the trellises.

Sadly, the top of my bird bath broke off.  It was a wedding gift from my grandmother.  Any ideas on how I can use it in my garden still?

A birdhouse that my dad and brother made for my mom.  I managed to convince her to let me use it. 

This year I mounded some beds in the garden so that I could run the soaker hoses from my rain barrel under the soil.  My hope is that the roots will grown down and reach the soaker hose.  Luckily the stakes and trellis held up through the winter.

This is a pepper seedling that Rebecca and I transplanted yesterday.  The red mulch is supposed to help tomatoes, peppers and eggplant produce more fruit.  We'll see how it does...

These are my pea plants.  I am hoping that it will stay cool long enough to be able to produce some pea pods!

Lima bean

Bean - purple podded pole

Okra

Green bean - bush

Yellow squash

Cucumber

Zucchini and one of Rebecca's sunflower plants

Carrot seedlings

Cilantro

Butterfly bush and salvia coming back strong

My friend shared a raspberry bush with me at the end of last season.  Hope we get some berries this year!

New butterfly bush planted at the end of last season