Been a few months since the last update. Why? I've been busy with the garden and too tired to do much of anything when I get back inside. Days are getting shorter now and a few days of rain so figured I would do one.
The garden has done pretty well so far this summer. Took a big hit about 3 weeks ago when I got an infection in my leg and couldn't get out to spray for fungus so I lost most of my cucumber plants. Some things did very well this year like those cucumbers. I've more than tripled my yearly record for zucchini already and there is still at least a month to go. Some things didn't do so well though. Radishes grew like crazy but never popped. Strangely I had trouble with green onions this year and I have never had an issue growing those before. Not sure if it's bad seeds or the weather or what. My corn did well up until a storm knocked it over. I tied it back up and salvaged about a dozen plants. Unfortunately the raccoons got the ears of corn right before I picked them. Watermelons are well a mess. Grew like crazy, got outside the chicken wire enclosures, took over my pepper plant enclosure, then lack of rain kind seems to have made several of the watermelons rot on the vine. Raccoons took advantage of several I couldn't put cages around too. Still there are a few doing well. Beginning to really hate raccoons. Tomatoes I got in late but they are really taking off. Some plants are now over 10 feet tall. Seems I ended up with mostly cherry tomato plants. And again the damn raccoons hit the regular tomatoes pretty hard so far. Not even ripe yet and they just knock them off the vine and half eat them. Soon they will be higher up on the vines and out of their reach. Peppers are doing decent except for the ones overrun by the watermelons. Lots of cayenne coming on and the sweet banana pepper plants have been the big producers so far. Makes sense they were the first to germinate and get transplanted. Got a few cantaloupes doing well. The one plant doing the best is one that I didn't plant. Came up on it's own where I dumped pots last year. Of course those pesky raccoons got 2 of those too.
Overall not a bad year. Could have been better but had a few things that caused a late start for a big portion of the garden. Of course the early demise of the cucumber plants. So here are the stats for July & August:
Cucumbers: July 682, August 551, Total 1233 I don't keep stats on the individual types of each variety. Just too hard to do. So many look alike. 1233 is the total of all of them. Even with the early end to most of the plants I still broke my old record of 1033 set back in 2010.
Peppers: July 3, August 65, Total 68 Numbers are a bit low due to a few issues so far this year. First most of my seeds were from prior to 2011 and didn't germinate so I had to replant with newer seeds. Second I had a delay in getting the plants into the ground due to needing to remove mulch and landscaping fabric. Tried planting though it last year but the plants didn't do well so I pulled it all out. Third was weather. We had a really late frost this year so that delayed everything. Oh almost forgot individual totals. Sweet Banana leads the way with 45 so far. Jalapeno is up next with 12. All from one plant which unfortunately got broke in a storm. Last so far is cayenne with 11.
Tomatoes: July 0, August 408, Total 408 Again late getting started. Bad seeds, bad grow bulbs, and the garden needing de-mulched. Of those 408 there were 374 cherry tomatoes and an additional green cherry tomatoes. Only 1 regular tomato with 3 green regular ones. Why green ones? Well simple. They get knocked off the vine or grabbed by accident when picking something else. Nearly all of them have already ripened. BTW cherry includes all small tomato varieties not just cherry. There are cherry, grape, jelly bean, etc.
Zucchini: July 75, August 135, Total 210 I shattered my old record of 66. Most of these got in late too. So far nearly all the plants are doing extremely well. I've never seen zucchini plants so big. They are producing 7 pound zucchini in 3 days. Little too big. I'm dreading Friday. It's the next day I will be able to pick and there will be some 5 days old. Could have some 10+ pounders.
Other: Beets 9, Cantaloupe 1, Watermelon 2 All of these were in August. I don't keep stats on some other things like green onions and any herbs.
A decent harvest. If you are wondering what I do with it all nearly all of it has been given away. My Mom eats some of the cucumbers, tomatoes, and the cantaloupe. I made a few jars of pickles. Rest was given away. Neighbors, friends, people walking by. Gave about 50 pounds of cucumbers to the local food bank but can you believe they had a hard time giving them away so they wouldn't take any more. At one point I put a couple of boxes on the hood of my truck with a free cucumber sign. I did manage to give nearly all away. Maybe 50 cucumbers have gone bad so far. I had one zucchini "explode" all over my kitchen floor when I picked it up. Another was about to so 2 of the 210 zucchini went bad. I have 3 zucchini, maybe 50 cucumbers, and a bunch of cheery tomatoes to give away right now.
I'll leave you with some photos of some of the harvests:
First Harvest
Most gardens consist of a mix of natural and constructed elements, although even very 'natural' gardens are always an inherently artificial creation. Natural elements present in a garden principally comprise flora (such as trees and weeds), fauna (such as arthropods and birds), soil, water, air and light.