Garden Tour Early August...

The garden is doing pretty good, there are a few crops I wish had done better (like the green beans, cucumbers, and corn), but overall they still look good and we are getting some bounty from even the weaker crops so we have much to be thankful for.  The weeds have been very healthy this year and keep finding ways to create more work for us, but the deep straw mulch helps so much I can't complain too much!

Here are a few overview pics of the garden and you can see the hay field has been cut for the 2nd cutting too.

Cucumbers, cantaloupe, dill, celery, chicken run etc.

Green beans, tomatoes, and flowers.

Swiss chard, cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, onions, carrots, zucchini, crookneck, and furthest out is the pig plot area that has mangels, canola, turnips, carrots etc.

Sunshine is checking out the Crenshaw melons.

The strawberries and corn beyond that.  The orchard is beyond the corn.

1 Ball yellow squash, I love these for stuffing!

Broccoli head, we have harvested about 75% of the plants now (we have about 90 plants) and we have about 34+ quart bags of  broccoli in the freezer (plus we've eaten a few meals worth too), our goal is about 45 bags.  We will continue to get some side shoots off the harvested plants later in the season to help us get to our goal.  We also plan to donate some of the larger remaining heads to the local food pantry if it is ripe on their next distribution day.

Some of the cantaloupe are gaining in size and might have a chance of ripening in time before frost.  We were unsure if we should grow melons as they take up a lot of space and we have never had good luck with melons, but we had to at least try now that we have so much more room to grow things.  So far so good on these.

My first year growing cauliflower is, so far, a success.  It tastes good, we've frozen a little here and there but mostly we've been eating it for dinner.  We did a few bags of frozen mixed broccoli and cauliflower which will be nice in the winter.  I am still learning how to tell when they are fully ripe and when to tie the leaves around the heads to prevent sunburn.  

We had to replant the cucumbers 2 times this year so they are a little later and I haven't gotten the yields I hoped for to be able to make pickles.  The only seeds I had left to reseed with were a space saving type so the vines are relatively small but are producing well for such small vines.  They have great flavor so far.

The lemon cucumbers are almost ripe and Mr. Wonderful can't wait for the first one of the season!  He LOVES these little gems.

The lettuce patch is hanging in there surprisingly well for such high temps lately.  It tastes good still and I'd love to plant this kind again next year!  Too bad I am not sure which mix this was. 

Here is a nice purple kohlrabi, we also have white and they both taste really good.  We sold about 22 to the local fruit stand because we had too many.  What we have left we should be able to eat before they grow too large to be tasty.

This spaghetti squash plant is really happy!  It is producing lots of squash, probably more than we'd eat so we might have a few to share and sell at some point.

At the end of the day with all the watering, weeding, harvesting, and tending....this is how we feel....

Then again, living here is a dream come true and no matter the hard work we are blessed and really enjoying it!  God has been so good to us.