Late July Harvest

The garden is in an in between stage right now. The melon bed is recovering from too much water with the rain a few weeks ago; I’ve been babying it a bit and hoping for the best. There was one melon forming for awhile but it ended up rotting and so far the most successful vine has been a moon and star watermelon.

I harvested the yellow corn a few weeks ago but most of the ears were rotting or undeveloped and not good to eat. We also had a patch of strawberry popcorn and the same thing has happened, though there were two ears Chris found ripe enough to keep as seed for next year, but he’s not liking the idea of continuing with corn. We’ve just not been very successful in the past with it either.

Finally all of the beans, except the cowpeas, are all beginning to flower and the asparagus beans are putting on long fruits. The luffa vine is beginning to climb wildly up the fence and it won’t be long until it is covering the west facing fence. All of our summer squash has been removed because it didn’t survive the squash vine borers and I’m nursing along two spaghetti squash vines that had some SVB damage, starting two new seeds to replace the ones that failed. One acorn squash plant is doing really well, the butternut is trying to do well as are sweet dumpling squash plants.

The tomatoes have not been the massive crop we had last year but I’m not complaining because I’m getting to eat tomatoes frequently this summer. I replaced four plants in hopes of getting a big crop of fall tomatoes for canning. We’re starting to run low on canned tomatoes and we’ve been out of spaghetti sauce for months; its hard to go back to grocery store sauce after you make your own.

Chris has started working on Phase 2 of the flower garden, the side yard flower bed. He’s trying to get as much done before he heads back to the field soon. I think this section is going to be pretty cool, we’re going to put a bench under the fig tree but now we’re in search of a comfortable bench. We went to Lowe’s to look but the variety was slim of course, and nothing looked comfortable for pulling up with a good book for a few hours outside.

I posted the last Summer Garden Tour today. Chel and I are trying to figure out where we’re going to go with Sprout Dispatch now. My brother has stopped contributing as he’s got a very full life at the moment, but he’s always welcome back. Until then I’ve thought about looking for a third contributor again but I’m not sure about how well someone would be able to participate in a mostly weekly blog, particularly if they weren’t in the south where gardening is a little more year-round. If you think you are interested shoot me an email (oceanicwilderness at gmail.com) and we’ll see if there’s a fit. Until then drop by and say hello as Chel and I adjust to a new routine around Sprout Dispatch.