Tomatoes, potatoes, and miscellaneous August garden views

In other words, more veggie garden photos.

First tomatoes and more

Last weekend I spent several hours doing some serious work in the garden, ripping out weeds and too many plants that had gone to seed. I'm saving some of the seeds and hope to plant them next year. Friday was the heavy work day, Saturday I planted more seeds for a late harvest of peas, lettuce, carrots, and cauliflower. I don't really know whether there's enough time left for any of these veggies to grow before winter sets in but this is my year to experiment.

The yellow pear tomatoes and the mystery small red tomatoes (cherry/sun gold/sweet 100?) are doing quite well. Found more blue potatoes when I went to plant the carrot seeds. Today's lunch was leftover eggplant Parmesan I made with the funny little white eggplants a local college agriculture program donated to the garden.

Surprisingly, Saturday was a very quiet day at the garden! Friday there were many people there. Workers at the adjacent farm, families with children touring the garden and harvesting from their family plots, and solitary gardeners like me catching up on the weeding and harvesting that was too hot to do earlier made it a lively place. But Saturday there were very few people there, and after watering the garden, I sat and enjoyed the relative solitude. Hummingbirds zoomed across the gardens in what looked like a game of tag; one even perched on one of my tomato cages, but not long enough for me to get out the camera and take a photo. Finches were busy harvesting sunflower seeds and racing around, chattering away at one another. Corn stalk leaves rustled with the wind. It all reminded me of why I like gardening; besides the satisfaction of helping things grow and getting delicious, fresh food in exchange for a little work, it provides a space to connect with the natural world, and refreshes the spirit.

A profusion of greenery

One last post of July garden images, and then I'll be caught up. As you can see, the garden was really in full bloom by mid-July, and a few plants, notably the bok choy and radishes, had already blossomed and gone to seed.

The Swiss chard and green lettuce did very well until August, when they finally gave up after a week of over 90 degree heat. I didn't spend too much time in the garden that week; just made sure to water daily and then headed back to cooler places.

The sunflowers didn't seem to mind the heat at all.

July Garden Photos

Here's the same corner view that was in the May image.

Red-leaf spinach, basil, sunflower and tomato cage in the background

Nasturtiums everywhere!

By July everything was thriving, and the nasturtiums were all over the garden, as were the sunflowers!

Feathery fennel and potato leaves in the foreground

Did I mention the potatoes and fennel that I planted? Or the giant squash--maybe zucchinis--that appeared in another corner of the garden?

May Veggie Garden Update

Flowering chives plant from a neighbor's garden

In May I planted seeds and seedlings, including one yellow pepper plant protected from the cold by a plastic water-filled wrap.

First planting

A well-protected pepper plant

The flowering chives plant is from a neighboring garden. In my garden I planted the pepper seedling, a couple of spinach seedlings, and some basil, yellow pear tomatoes, pole beans, lettuce, bok choy, radishes, and zucchini. The nasturtium leaves just emerging invited themselves, as did several other plants, but more about them later.

My veggie garden in April

I haven't had much time for garden visits this summer. Among other activities I've been busy with my community garden plot. So, to fill in the gaps, here are some pics of my vegetable garden as it appeared in April.

The view in mid-April shows that there wasn't much there but a compost bin and some dirt!

At that time there was also a resident Killdeer whose nest was next to one corner of the garden and who was very upset every time I tried to plant. She would fly into my garden and limp along, dragging one wing behind her to lead me away from her nest.