Summer Gardening

Posted bycathyboettnerPosted inGardeningTags:, , , , , ,

As I mentioned in my last gardening post, our garden has been super productive this year. I’m sure that I have harvested well over 100 lbs of produce–tons of kale; 60+ heads of romaine lettuce; bunches of arugula; about 10 lbs of potatoes; 20+ lbs of cucumber; and the tomatoes are going to outpace everything.

My latest harvests have included poblanos, butternut squash, grape tomatoes, and a pumpkin from a volunteer vine in the compost pile.

This is 35 poblanos. I had a similar harvest a couple weeks ago.
5 butternut squash and more on the vines.
These are some HUGE grape tomatoes. They are just getting started. We’re going to be buried. I always pick my tomatoes green so that I get them before all the bugs, birds, and other animals do.
Look at this cutie pumpkin. I have it in the basement. We’ll see if it makes it to Halloween. I picked a few more, but I am not sure if they were really ready–they were turning orange, but the rind doesn’t seem as tough.

The garden on the south side of the house is going full tilt.

The basil is doing really well. I’m going to make roasted garlic marinara in the next couple of weeks, so these plants are going to get major haircuts. I love the little volunteer that is coming up.
Our tomatoes like to flop all over the place so we have been weaving jute twine around the plants to keep them upright so I can get in there to pick tomatoes. Back here I have about 60 Cherokee Purple tomato plants.
These butternut squash vines are doing well. I had to block the sprinkler that was hitting it because it was killing leaves. I just used a stack of bricks by the sprinkler. You can see how many more squash are forming. Some are just a couple weeks away from being ready. I shouldn’t have to buy any butternut squash this year. You can also see to the left where I replanted yellow squash. My yellow squash always struggles.

I picked all of my poblano peppers and no new peppers have formed, so I am going to pull up the plants and fill the trough back to the top with landscape/planting mix from our local bulk supplier–sand, topsoil, and mushroom compost is what’s in it. Once that is in place, I will plant that trough with carrots. (We eat a LOT of carrots and they are really easy to grow.)

Speaking of getting ready for fall, I have already started my kale and swiss chard plants.

I direct sow the chard because the seeds are big enough to see.

Kale seeds, on the other hand, are super tiny. I sprinkled them in a bigger pot and kept them watered.

I definitely planted more than I need, but I really couldn’t tell how many seeds I was planting. They are like grains of sand.

I gently pulled the baby kale out of the pot and put them in nursery pots–32 of them. I still have so many left, but I can’t plant the whole garden in kale because I also want to grow swiss chard, lettuce, and arugula. This is Lacinato kale, so they are pretty big plants.

I will let these fall greens grow in their pots until I pull up the tomatoes and then I will amend the soil with landscape mix, and transplant them so they get a good start. It will be nice to not be doing that in October when it’s starts getting chilly.

More to come!

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