It is August already and we are reaping the benefits of all of our hard work in our garden this summer!
This summer has been quite hot with bouts of heavy rain. When it has been hot during the day, we either water early in the morning or in the early evening so the water has a chance to soak into the ground. Often watering during the day can cause wilting and, the water evaporates before it has a chance to soak into the ground and get to the roots. With the heavy rain, we check on the garden when we can and just leave it. If it rains a lot and the garden has water pooling, we just add dirt to those low spots. We found the garden plots at our community garden actually drain quite well and we never had an issue with flooding. Our garden containers in our yard though often flooded out or dried out very quickly and were a little more challenging to grow vegetables in, although the potatoes, onions and lettuce by far did the best in flower garden containers!
Let’s check out the garden at our community garden!
Here you can see that our dill is growing magnificently! Our cucumbers were sparse this year, and after replanting three times, we opted to just tend to what was growing. We finally came to the conclusion that the ants that had overtaken a part of our garden may have been eating our seeds or the moles that were tunneling through may have decided that cucumber seeds as well as our beets and herbs were mighty delicious! Nevertheless, we had a few cucumbers growing well! The patty pan squash are growing wonderfully and we have been enjoying them all summer long! The dill fronds are great with fresh garden potatoes and carrots, in salads or even dried or chopped and placed in a jar and then placed in the freezer to enjoy during the winter months!
A closer look at those cucumbers, patty pan squash — and you can see the dill and our neighboring gardeners garden plots too!
The patty pan squash have produced so well and this one is nearly ready to pick! They are best when smaller!
Our herbs. The parsley is by far our best producing herb this summer! We cut as we need it and it grows back even more full than before! It has long roots and is rather hard to just pull from the ground, so simply cut with scissors or garden shears and use fresh or even dry it.
The sage is growing well and smells fantastic. It too can be used either fresh or dried. It tastes best with chicken dishes.
The chamomile is ready to be picked and steeped into tea.
The other herbs have not grown unfortunately, but we will definitely try a herb garden again next year!
Here also, we have planted extra carrots and beans.
The beets and carrots are still growing great! We planted regular cylinder beets as well as candy striped beets.
Summer garden veggies, like this beet, are just so vibrant!
Here you can see the carrots, beans and potatoes. All are growing excellent and the beans are producing so much. Beans are quite easy to maintain — simply water when dry. Really, that is all there is to it. You can snip the tops off so they stop growing upward and produce more beans, but I never do and I always am able to pick plenty all summer long. As you pick, the beans continue to flower and you continue to pick! That is one thing I love about beans — just a few plants can produce a lot of beans.
We planted yellow wax beans as well as green beans. They are a bush variety and actually grow like a bush (they really do get quite bushy!). I grow them together, can them into pickles together and cook them together. I find they taste quite similar and have always grown green and yellow beans in the same rows.
Potatoes. We have been enjoying potatoes for a while. Once they flower, the fresh garden baby potatoes are ready. Once the flowers fall off, the potatoes are much larger and perfect for cooking as well. Just move a bit of dirt away, pick the potatoes out and cover it back up with dirt and the plant will keep producing potatoes all summer long! Is that not so fantastic!?!
Garden potatoes are vibrant and taste delicious. Lightly scrub them under water, and the peel just falls right off. Old potatoes, like we usually purchase from the store, often need to be peeled because the peel tends to be rather tough. The root pieces and “hairy” roots that stick to the potato, I just cut off with a paring knife before I scrub them.
The zucchini are still growing great! Squash is an easy vegetable to grow and needs to be watered often. Too much water can rot the roots, but not enough water will produce a bitter squash. When the days have been hot, we can actually smell the bitterness coming from the plant – in this case, we just water them a little extra.
Zucchini really can be picked at any size. However the extremely large zucchini tend to have large seeds inside which need to be removed, and can be tough and stringy. Smaller zucchini are great to cook and saute with and medium size zucchini (like pictured here) are great to shred and bake with.
This evening, we are looking forward to a meal of garden veggies — things like sauteed zucchini “noodles,” sauteed patty pan squash, lightly boiled (or steamed) potatoes with fresh dill and pickled or sauteed beans with fresh parsley. Garden vegetables are simply yummy!
enjoy from Our City Homestead to yours