We’ve been really busy, and the garden has been growing! We picked all our peas and are going to replant to get a fall crop. We are starting to get beans, zucchini, and cucumbers. We’ve been picking lettuce, chard, kale, and herbs. Here are some pictures of the late July garden…
A pretty zinnia – the first one to bloom this year.Here are my carrots & beets (on the left) and my lettuces on the right. I’ve realized that with this French Intensive method, I really didn’t need to grow this much lettuce. I’ll do one combined chard/kale/lettuce bed next year.Here is the main garden – everything is growing nicely. Using the raised bed method has definitely kept things neater. The weeds are still a bit of a problem but there are spots where I don’t worry about them as much since they are on the pathways. I pick them out when I can and add mulch. The weeds in the actual veggie beds are really easy to remove since the soil is less compact.Some of my sunflowers. The shorter one bloomed early but didn’t get any taller (it’s about 4 to 4.5 ft tall). I have one very tall one (not pictured here) that is about 7 feet tall now, and not blooming yet.Here is a bloomed sunflower in our back strawberry bed, with a visiting bumblebee. This is a rogue sunflower and I thought it would be lemon yellow, since last year’s plant in this spot (the rogue I thought had re-seeded this one) was lemon yellow. I tend to let sunflowers grow wherever they want to, even in the middle of my beans or the side of the strawberry bed.Here are some of my cucumbers. These are starting to get quite prolific. I have 4 or 5 plants and they are growing really well.My first zucchini of the season. I am growing a “summer surprise mix” with several varieties – the shortest here are 4 inches (and skinny) and then I have this striped variety as well. There are also two yellow squash plants but they aren’t large enough to pick yet.Here is the cucumber bed. I scared a hiding toad the other day while picking cucumbers.We picked all the peas, and I shelled most of them. We got 4-5 cups of peas (after shelling), as well as a bunch of pea pods that I threw in some stir fry. Since I picked them all, we figured we’d grow some more since we should have time, and they should do well in the late season’s cooler weather.Here is the zucchini/squash/tomato garden. The tomatoes are growing nicely and have flowers. I haven’t seen any actual tomatoes developing yet but they should appear soon. I ended up using sticks to stake my tomatoes, it’s working well so far. Our old tomato cages were all beat up, and I didn’t really like using them.The chickens came to investigate when I was taking pictures.A rogue nasturtium. These took over my garden last year, and re-seeded, so I have been trying to pull them out. I decided to leave a couple and I’m working on training them up the fence instead of into the vegetable patches. My son calls them his “edible flowers.” I do think they are pretty but they sprawl everywhere.
The garden is doing good – I can’t wait for tomatoes!
It’s all looking great. I always end up with a couple of rogue nasturtiums too, but I don’t mind them as they tend to self seed in the bottom of the garden were they don’t get in the way of anything else. ☺
My tiny u.p. farm 
It’s all looking great. I always end up with a couple of rogue nasturtiums too, but I don’t mind them as they tend to self seed in the bottom of the garden were they don’t get in the way of anything else. ☺
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