August 3, 2010: The Garden in August; Part 1

Since this post will be so graphics heavy, I will break it down into two separate posts. Today I'll show you how the east garden is growing.

A volunteer Juliet is trellised to the fence and loaded with tomatoes that are beginning to ripen. This is not one of my favorite tomato varieties, but they are really heavy bearers that will all be made into sauce. A double row of Top Crop bush beans, recently planted and not yet blossoming, in front of Juliet.

Next are the two shaded lettuce beds, recently planted with lettuce, spinach and carrots for fall. As the weather cools, the lattice shades can be removed. When frost arrives, the structures can be covered to extend the growing season for these cold tolerant crops.

The lettuce seedlings are growing quickly. It won't be long before a few leaves can be harvested from the Red Sails.

One of two potted eggplants. Lovely plants with lots of blossoms, no eggs.

The sweet pepper bed is lush with growth.

The lush growth is full of lush peppers, too! I'm still finding a few with the same problem the early peppers had, but most of them are growing big and healthy.

The next bed, not shown in the photo, was recently planted with Swiss Chard, which is just now germinating. The bed that is barely visible on the right contains a few carrots and newly planted lettuce seed. This bed is unprotected, so the lettuce will probably end up being bird feed. The larger bed has marigolds, cabbage, basil, parsley, bush beans that are bearing heavily, beets and a few more carrots.

A closer look at the bush beans. The photo doesn't do justice to the amount of beans on these plants! They are a baby fillet type, and I should be getting my first picking in the next day or two. Having never grown this variety before, I'm not sure just how large I should let them get before picking them.

I've harvested most of the potatoes from this bed. My yield wasn't as good as last year, so I wish I'd planted twice as many. It's been nice not having to buy potatoes this summer, as all of ours have come from this small bed. Since the potatoes have been dug from both sides, I'm trench composting my kitchen scraps here. Later in the season, with some chopped up leaves, grass clippings and composted manure, this bed will be retired for the winter.

Down the fence line, I have three determinate tomato plants, a container of pickling cucumbers climbing the fence, a few bell peppers that were moved out of the pots where they weren't doing well (they are recuperating fine now), basil, dill, alyssum, marigolds, rosemary, cabbage, 3 leftover lettuce seedlings in a plastic mesh cage for bird protection, chives, Shasta daisies, and hollyhocks that should blossom next year. Not shown is another small (2'x2') planting of bush beans. They are some of the Contender beans I planted in the spring, and they are bearing a second crop now.

On the other side of this fence are the six determinate tomatoes I planted to share with my neighbor, Pat, along with a good sized planting of Royal Burgundy beans and two hills of zucchini. Pat has picked a half dozen or so tomatoes, a big bucket of beans and one zucchini so far. She's so thrilled with "her" garden, I haven't the heart to take anything from it for myself.