We had a decent summer. I got really busy and have not updated here in awhile. My main garden is fenced, inside another fence (for our dogs). The deer have not really gotten in until this year – my dogs are getting older and I guess don’t really bark at the deer when they come in. The deer figured this out and essentially annihilated my main garden toward the end of the season. They ate all my tomatoes, and zucchini, and anything else they found out there. I did get a good harvest but I had to get what I could before they could eat it all. There are some things I didn’t even get to harvest because of the deer, including cauliflower and broccoli. Looking forward to next year, I’m going to have to make my garden fence taller, or something. I’ll figure that out. Luckily they didn’t get into our cottage garden (not sure why, but I’ll take it). For now, here are some cool pictures of the end of our gardening season 2021:
Here are some of our tomatoes and zucchini that we got, before the deer figured out they could get into the garden. 
A bee on a Torch flower (Mexican sunflower) 
A Monarch butterfly on the torch flowers. These flowers were wonderful and got about 6 feet tall and stayed blooming into October. 
Some cute mushrooms growing in the old mulch of my cottage garden. 
Our giant sunflowers this year. One got to about 12 feet tall. 
A view of the sky between the tall sunflowers. 
Here is an earlier picture of the torch flowers, when they were smaller. 
My zinnias. These came up and bloomed after all my poppies were done. I also had some asters in this bed that bloomed into October. 
Here are my “giant” pumpkins. They did get large (over 12″ across) but I believe they were stunted by the deer eating the plants and biting into these. You can see the damage they caused. I had to cage them in using old fence pieces so that I could keep the deer from demolishing them. 
A foxglove bloom – my plant from last year either re-seeded or came back. 
Some inky cap mushrooms growing in our driveway. 
I put in sunchokes a few years ago (Jerusalem Artichokes) and they finally got a flower this year. We have yet to try to dig up tubers to eat them. I wanted the bed to get established, and this shows that they are finally getting there. 
A closer photo of the one sunchoke flower. 
Some cute mushrooms growing in the mulch by my Haskap berry plants. There were hundreds of these little guys. This pic does not do it justice. They are kind of hidden by the leaves as well.
My tiny u.p. farm 
Reblogged this on ARTiSTiC TENDENCiES.
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We had sunchokes too. Loved them roasted, but gave terrible gas.
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I still haven’t tried them. I put them in a few years ago as a “perpetual vegetable” that I wouldn’t have to plant every year. 🙂
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Totally Cool… Keep It Up, Jen!
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