Winding Down

We are now in that harvest/turning from Summer to Autumn period in the garden.  While we are still getting plenty of goodies from the garden, most of the plants are showing signs of decline.  The tomatoes are mostly finished, though we have gotten plenty of fruit.

(We did have what appeared to be a blight attack the tomato plants)

The beans continue to produce and we are finding it hard to keep up with them.  And they have been wonderful this year - compared to the previous couple of years it has been a great pole bean year for us.

The squash plants are long gone, but the nasturtiums are quickly filling in.  And there are a few monster radishes in there too - and of course, the mint is doing well.

The basil is ready for harvest.  Pesto time!  And the Cosmos is finally flowering profusely.

The carrots are coming along though I still don't hold out much hope for the harvest.

We finally cured and processed our onions for storage.  A mere 20 some pounds this year, close to 40 pounds last year.

At home, our morning glories are taking over the front porch.

And on a side note:

The past 2 weekends we have gotten in day hikes in the Evans Notch area of the White Mountains.  Baldface Mountain 2 weeks ago and last week, Blueberry Ridge.  This is the best time of year for hiking in New England.

Onion Harvest

Not a whole lot going on in the garden right now.  We are harvesting tomatoes, an occasional pepper, and the squashes are winding down - still getting a few, but the plants are looking tired.

This past weekend we harvested most of our onions and they are now laid out on our back porch drying.  Here we have before and after pictures:

Fifteen minutes later:

We are harvesting beans now at a furious pace:

And the cosmos are finally blooming:

Everything is quickly turning to late summer with autumn just around the corner.  Much more harvesting to come.

Tangents

A quick update with a few garden related items and a few other items that are not directly garden related.  First, when we visited the garden on Saturday afternoon, we found a painter set up in front of our garden.  She was making a painting of our perennial flower corner, with it's oregano, bee balm, globe thistle, phlox and grasses, with the barn as a backdrop.  We asked if the painter would mind if I took a picture of her painting.  She was fine with it:

Thank you for letting me include your painting and for seeing and appreciating the beauty in our garden.

One of our neighbor gardeners has a new resident inside their fence:

This happens on occasion in the gardens.  Since we are located in a wildlife sanctuary, the groundhogs are protected (as well as being the subjects of a long standing scientific study), and they are pretty much everywhere, including underneath our gardens.  Every so often one of them will dig out an exit hole right in the middle of some poor gardener's plot.  We had one a number of years back just outside our fence.  That is as close as they have come, but of course we could be blessed with our very own groundhog exit hole at any time.

We now have obvious beans coming along.  Soon...

A tangent.  Some of our non-vine morning glories that we planted in flower boxes on our balcony at home.  We also have vines growing on the downstairs porch railings.

This is only garden related in that this has become our new favorite stop on our way home from the garden.  Love Cupcakes  Very wonderful cupcakes and the nicest people, too.  Makes it a bit easier to get over the closing of Stonyfield Cafe, our old favorite "fast-food" stop for garden picnic dinners.

Fighting Back

No excuses.  It has been over 3 weeks since my last post.  Laziness, pure and simple.  I will try to update the goings on over the last month. 

After witnessing the aftermath of the Groundhog invasion last month, we took action to try to prevent further damage.  This included patching some holes in our fence and covering the lettuce and chard with plastic netting to discourage further salad bar visits.

We continued to notice small amounts of critter munching going on, but after a thorough search for holes in the fences, I think we may have put an end to most of the breaches.

 

Our pole beans are progressing.  Starting to see many blossoms and some very tiny beans beginning to form.

We should be harvesting onions within the next week. 

There is some progress on the carrot front.  I actually was able to thin them some last week.

 

We harvested our garlic 2 weeks ago and have been enjoying a house full of the aroma of drying garlic.  Next up - onions.

The Basil is kind of overshadowing the peppers here.

So far, so good with the tomatoes.  They are just starting to ripen.  Soon the tomato deluge!

Removing squash bugs and eggs from the leaves of our yellow crook-neck and zucchini.

Hungry Groundhogs

We had been lucky so far this season - only the slugs and a few squash pests causing very minimal damage (if you could call it damage at all).  Saturday morning we stopped at the garden on our way to visit friends with the intent to pick some lettuce to bring with us.  Well, it appears that since Tuesday the groundhogs were getting into their salad mode and pretty much took care of our lettuce for us.

They also added 2 of our 3 cabbage plants to the mix and sampled some of our chard and dill.  We did get a couple of nice yellow squashes and everything else is looking good.  Tried to patch up one of the most obvious holes in our poor fence.  Will be making a trip over today to cover some of the most tempting plants and patch up any other fence holes.  Hopefully we don't have a repeat of last year's  massacre where the groundhogs wiped out all of our Cabbage, Brussels Sprouts, and Kale.

Two destroyed cabbages in the lower left among the weeds.

So far the beans are doing well.

Zucchinis are coming along nicely.

More Oregano than we can ever use...

The Beginning...

Finally.  At last.  A blog entry.  

I set this blog up a few weeks ago with the intention of keeping a running record of our garden through the growing season.  Well the garden is growing and I have been taking photos on almost every visit we have made to the garden.  I will quickly post a few pictures from yesterday, and hopefully catch up with some of the best of the last few months to give an idea of how things have progressed so far. 

 The front plot looking across the meadow and the Presumpscot River.

 Globe Thistle and Bee Balm

 Pole Beans and Chard

 Peppers, Basil, and Parsley

 

 Crook Neck yellow squash.

Carrots.  We planted a month ago and the next day was the first of 3 days of rain, 7-8 inches total.  3 weeks later we had 7 carrots growing.  Replanted last weekend and they are growing now.

Garlic and onions.  Onions are always our best crop.  Just plant, weed occasionally, and water.  Last year we harvested 40 pounds that lasted us a good part of the winter.

That's our garden with the Rhubarb in the front corner.

(Thanks to LBM for the inspiration to try blogging.)