August garden update

I realized last week that we were already more than a week into August and I hadn't posted a new garden update. Good grief! So I took my camera out a couple of times and snapped a few photos to share.

Here's the overall shot of the garden. For the most part everything has been doing really well. Except the cauliflower. That was a dud. The plant has continued to grow and sprout floret-looking "things," but they look odd, so we haven't picked anything off that plant. Oh, well.

The squash (just to the right of the potted basil in the photo) is finally starting to get bigger and has a baby sunburst squash. It's about time! Usually the squash and/or zucchini we plant waste no time in spreading out as far as they can.

The beans have been reaching their tendrils everywhere and flowering like mad. I don't think we've found or picked as many beans as we have in past years, though. But that's probably OK. We've actually been able to keep up with eating them more or less as we pick them. (I think at the end of last summer we had multiple gallon-size bags filled with beans stuffed in the fridge.)

We've harvested Swiss chard a few times, but we discovered that the goldfinches really like to nibble on it, so I guess we're sharing that crop. (You can't really see it in this photo; it's growing under the cucumber trellis, which is in the middle on the left side of the photo.) One finch was really brave and decided to eat some for dinner while my sister was standing just a couple of feet away. But that's okay; we were both a little relieved to realize that's why all the leaves were holey -- at least the plant didn't have some awful disease or pesky bug.

Here are a few close-up photos:

These are the San Marzano tomatoes. This tomato plant will stop at nothing. It's completely outgrown its cage and doesn't seem to be slowing down. It's also been full of tomatoes -- I think there are at least a dozen in this photo. They were a little slow to ripen, but they're coming along now. I ate some for lunch today with some fresh mozzarella and a bit of balsamic vinegar. Yum!

Here is the baby sunburst squash. Actually I just realized there are two in this photo -- one right in the middle and a teeny, tiny one just above it. And it looks like there might be another one coming near the bottom of the photo. I hope we get a good crop even though they're late bloomers.

If you haven't tried sunburst squash before, I would recommend it. I'm not really a fan of winter squash varieties (e.g., pumpkin, acorn squash, etc.) because they're too, well, squashy. But I've found that I do enjoy summer squash, such as zucchini and sunburst squash. We usually just cut them up and either sautee or roast them.

The eggplant is doing well, too. The last time we planted eggplant -- I think two years ago -- it only grew one fruit. So far this year we have four coming in (in this photo one is hidden behind the leaves below the large eggplant in the middle). We'll have to find some good eggplant recipes! If you have any favorites, leave a comment below. My sister loves cookbooks and recipes, and thankfully she does a lot of our cooking, because I don't particularly enjoy it. She is vegan, so we don't use meat or dairy, but she's pretty good at adapting recipes whenever possible.

Here are a couple of the pepper plants -- the chocolate peppers are in the photo on the right, and the tangerine dream peppers are on the left. We did notice that for quite awhile the tangerine dream peppers insisted on growing straight up. I'm not sure if that's the way they usually grow, but it was amusing.

And just because I think they're really pretty, here is a close-up shot of the flowers on one of the bean plants. We planted a few different varieties, and I love all the different colored flowers -- and the bumblebees do, too! Yippee!

The sunflowers are finally blooming in the flower patch by the alley. Only a few of the seeds sprouted, and I think the rest of them became a snack for the local wildlife.
These sunflowers aren't nearly as big as the mammoth ones we planted a couple of years ago, but it's much easier to take pictures of them!

Thanks for stopping by!