Garden Update: Part 1

This year's garden is teaching me many things:

1. Pumpkin vines go EVERYWHERE!  

2. Watermelon vines go EVERYWHERE!  

3. Pumpkins and watermelons need their own 15x15 space.  

4. Don't plant squash, zucchini, and pumpkins so close together, it causes a huge intertwining mess. 

5. Don't put plants in #4 so close to green beans, the green beans don't like it.  

6. Don't ever plant green beans on the downhill slope of the garden again, they don't like the excess water... it causes them to produce pods with no beans in them.  (and it doesn't help that we've had a wet summer)

7. Put bird netting up before the berries start to ripen. Birds and children by the name of Paul eat them up faster than you can imagine. 

8. San Marzano tomato plants should be caged before they get ginormous so they don't fall over and break in half. 

9.  Onions need looser soil to make bigger onions, otherwise they get deformed because of the high clay content in the soil.  

10. Put compost and leaves in the garden soil in the fall, don't wait until spring to tend to the soil.

11. Blueberries take forever to ripen. We keep picking them and they are still green on the inside... maybe it's not hot enough here? I have no idea.  

12.  Put grasshopper bait out at the BEGINNING of the summer.  If you have grasshoppers, check out Nolo Bait, it's not a pesticide, it's an organic bait that attracts grasshoppers and kills them and it really works.  We just should have done it in May instead of July.  

The massively out-of-control garden.  My cherry tomato plants are about 4 feet tall! 

Onions were pulled and are drying (that's the big bare spot on the left)

 The never-ripening blueberries that have been half eaten by birds. 

 Squash deliciousness

 Little Jack pumpkin!!  I can't believe it actually grew!

 Big pumpkin

 Lettuce... who knew it grew this tall? I didn't.  It's about to flower and seed out. 

 Zucchini

 Seriously, a watermelon actually grew!! Who knows if it will ripen before winter gets here, but we hope so! 

 The bell peppers are finally getting enough heat to make some peppers.

 We ate our first tomatoes this week!! 

Look at the poor leaves, they've been eaten alive by grasshoppers and tiny little plant flea beetles.

 Okra is alive and growing!

 I think we'll have about a handful of blackberries.  I can't wait!! 

 And lastly, we are eating our second round of strawberries.  They produced in June and are now wildly producing again.  Unfortunately the grasshoppers are eating about half of the ripe ones before I can pick them.  That or Paul pulls the netting off and eats them.  That boy LOVES strawberries.

It is so fun going out there everyday and looking at what is growing (or dying) and gazing in wonder at how it all came from tiny little seeds.  Just amazing!