To say it’s been a busy month would be putting it lightly. The garden is doing better than ever before and I’ve been harvesting, cooking, and preserving as fast as I can đ I’ve harvested more in one month than I did for the entire season last year! July is normally the start of monsoon season, but although we’ve had the heat (up to 110 degrees!!) there hasn’t been much rain at all.
In spite of the heat and lack of rain the plants have done really well. I attribute this to the thick layer of straw mulch. I generally water twice a week for the in ground plants and daily for the potted plants.
I started harvesting cherry tomatoes at the beginning of the month, earlier than ever before. By the end of the month I was harvesting cherry, pink, yellow, Roma, Amish paste, and my first Homestead tomatoes (and getting BIG harvests just about daily!) The potted basil (planted early in July) sprouted and grew quickly. I’ve been harvesting that to use fresh and even managed to make a few jars of pesto already.
I’ve been harvesting zucchini (Black Beauty and Grey Zucchini) just about daily. I’ve made several pans of stuffed zucchini, Zucchini chocolate cake, roast zucchini, and more. I’ve had enough to blanch and freeze, as well as shred and freeze, so I’ll have zucchini ready for recipes in the middle of winter. Same goes for the yellow squash.
The green beans got off to a good start and I managed to get some good harvests during the early part of the month. I blanched and froze about 3 quarts and have made several meals with fresh beans. I like to saute some garlic in olive oil, add in the beans and cook just until tender- simple and delicious!
The beans got off to a good start, but they’re starting to dry up now. Between the intense heat and the grasshoppers it’s not surprising that the first planting is starting to struggle. I do have beans planted in a few other spots that I started later, so hopefully they’ll start producing soon. I try to make successive plantings with all the veggies that will grow quickly, like beans, summer squash, basil, and greens.
My second planting of zucchini took off quick and is starting to produce. In the picture above the cucumber plants (on the right) look really good. I managed to get about 4 cukes off the plants before they just up and died:( I’ve had a really hard time with cucumbers (but I keep trying!).
After a rough start this spring the peppers have started to really take off and I’ve got quite a few green peppers on the plants. I’ve never harvested red, orange, or yellow peppers before mid to late August, so I’m just trying to be patient and waiting for them to get ripe.
The cantaloupe took a while to come up, and I’d almost given up on them, but they’ve really taken off lately. They’re loaded with flowers and I’m really hoping for a good harvest. Fresh cantaloupe is absolutely delicious!
The first planting of zucchini and yellow squash have been producing like mad and I’ve only lost one plant so far. Amazingly I’ve had minimal squash bugs- a first for this garden. In years past those bugs have absolutely decimated my squash plants.
This year I’ve got LOTS of lizards and beneficial insects in the garden though, and I really think they’re working overtime to keep the bad bugs at bay. I’ve only used Neem a few times when I spotted squash bug nymphs emerging, and then only as a spot treatment. Neem is organic and way safer than chemical pesticides, but it will still kill the good bugs along with the target insects, so I’m trying to play it safe and keep a healthy balance.
For the grasshoppers, which can utterly devastate the garden in no time, I put out NOLO bait, which is a targeted biological insecticide. It only affects grasshoppers and crickets, so it’s safe for the other animals and insects in the garden. I also hand pick and feed the grasshoppers to the chickens every chance I get.
One way I attract a host of beneficial insects into the garden is to have a variety of flowers throughout the vegetables. I have marigolds, sunflowers, nasturtiums, calendula, zinnias, and four o’ clocks, along with a few carrots and parsley plants that are flowering. I’ve never seen so many bees, wasps, parasitic flies, praying mantis, ladybugs, dragonflies, and more!
The cucumbers I planted in pots are doing pretty good and I’ve even got a few small cukes on the vines. At this point I’d be happy with anything I can get from them!
The butternut squash are all doing good and have lots of squash on the vines. If they all reach maturity I’m going to have a lot of butternut squash this fall! I accidentally overplanted this spring, thinking the first batch of seeds wasn’t going to sprout. Turns out they all sprouted- they just took longer than usual. In the meantime I had started more seeds though, and they all came up as well. Then those mystery plants in the compost turned out to be butternut squash too. Good thing we like butternut squash!
So that’s what’s growing in the garden right now. Hopefully everything continues to do well as summer progresses.
Thanks for stopping by!
~Michelle
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