Garden Update August 23, 2009

My garden has been a little neglected this summer, but I’m trying to get a few things done for a fall harvest. Last weekend, I cleaned out all of vegetation and weeds in the bed by the back door. The only thing I left was a pepper plant that hasn’t produced anything yet, a few herbs, and two strawberry plants that have shot out runners. I filled it up to the top with some of Allen’s free compost and planted a cover crop of bush beans today.


I planted bush beans in three-quarters of this raised bed, and lettuce mix in the remainder.

Planted about eight square feet of spinach in this bed.

All of the tomato plants in this bed survived the summer so far, but they are about worn out. I’ve trimmed them up and will let new branches grow on the trunks. Some of these plants are over six foot tall.

The pepper plants are doing great. This is one of the Anaheims (I think)

The bushy plant with all the tiny peppers is my Tabasco. It is thriving.

Another Anaheim.

The cantaloupe plants have taken over this bed, which is fine with me. The 3 fruits I have harvested so far have been VERY good. I am training the vines to go vertical, to get more food per square foot of soil.

Four cantaloupe in a small area, ready from by belly soon!

Four okra plants. I’m not sure this is enough to do much with, but you have to pick the fruit pretty much every day or they so big you can only use them for firewood.

Pole beans on the left are doing great, but not producing beans anymore because I didn’t keep them picked. Cucumbers on the right are about dead, but don’t know what went wrong.

The pole beans I planted with my corn are doing good, but the corn stalks all fell down so it is just a clump of stuff. I’m just going to let the beans grow as much as they want, hopefully will pump lots of nitrogen into the soil.