Soon to be harvest...

Soon the harvest will be going full swing. I'm starting to see color in the rows of tomatoes and I spotted the first pepper! Green cabbages are in. Although I may not actually get to use one of them since Bear decided to use it as a ball the other night. He was entertained for quite awhile. He also got a kick out of the 1/2 bushel of potatoes that I had dug out of the compost pile. So much fun. Makes me glad I have the garden.

August Rain

We got crazy rain on Friday. For Missoula it was the wettest day on record. Over 2 inches in a 24 hour period. I couldn't believe it. And in August! I'm sure it made my garden happy. It is coming along quite happily. I need to harvest some more green cabbage. Someday the red/purple cabbage will be ready. My cauliflower is just about ready too. Now if I can get my tomatoes to ripen I can pick those and start my canning for real. Of course it would help if my peppers would get a move on so I can make salsa. So far I've only had a few flowers on the peppers, but no fruit.

I have lots of volunteer plants in the garden. Tomatoes everywhere, and some squash of unknown variety. I thought I only planted zucchini and one pumpkin. The one squash that is coming up in the middle of my tomatoes is some sort of round squash. It might be a pumpkin, but it might be an acorn squash of some sort from seeds that went into the compost pile. I think that may be where all of my volunteer tomatoes are coming from as well. I seem to have several yellow pear tomatoes like I had planted last year. I never planted any this year, but a couple of my plants seem to be producing little pear shaped fruits. Its kinda fun to see what is coming up and producing on it's own.

I have beans that are getting ready. We've eaten 3 zucchinis already. 2 green and 1 yellow. Bear loves fresh sauted zucchini. He isn't such a big fan of the broccoli I cooked up with it, but he ate an entire zucchini by himself. Makes it very worth having a garden.

Mmmm...what else? I should dig potatoes and get them stored in the root cellar. My peas are yellowing and are seeming to slow production. I'll just have to pull them soon. Strawberries are done. I didn't get lots this year, but they only got planted this spring. It is almost time to plant my garlic for next year and I think I might try some fall onions for next spring. Not sure how that will work. I'm thinking about maybe a few more beets for this fall too. That's a big fat maybe right now since I'm the only one that eats those.

Notes

Just a few notes here... I'm getting more cabbages but I'm starting to really have to fight the slugs for them. I've gotten some broccoli although with our hot weather it pretty much just bolted straight to flowers/seeds. My peas are wrapping up it seems and the beans are just getting going. I ended up direct sowing some beans since frost got my seedlings I had going. I seem to have a plethora of earwigs and squash bugs. This is in addition to the slugs. I'm not too keen on using anything on them though. I was using beer traps for the slugs. Those seem to work, but you do have to be diligent about resetting them. I have not been. That's one thing, I'm sure I would get more out of the garden if I worked out there more, but I just can't seem to get out there. After working all day in town I want to see my kid once I'm home. The garden really doesn't seem to be all that much worse for the wear though. Plenty of bugs and weeds but my veggies seem to be hardy enough to fend for themselves. Good thing too.

I should get my broccoli in the freezer at some point this weekend. We don't seem to have the worms that get into broccoli. Yay! At least that's one thing I don't have to worry about. I haven't decided if I really want to add more stuff for this fall. I'm going to have a heck of a time keeping up with my harvest as it is. I need to pick up some canning jars and lids so I can put my tomatoes up.

I think that's all for now.