 |
| Pic of edible garden early August |
Sunday, August 13, 2023
August sees the full swing of the summer, warm season garden harvests. Late sweet corn (plant corn in succession and different varieties to lengthen the harvest), summer squashes (like zucchini), peppers of all types (sweet to hot, hot), tomatoes, Mediterranean herbs, cucumbers, okra, apples, peaches, pears, grapes, beans, melons, figs, eggplant, honey, artichokes, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, onion, and fennel are all in season in the Midwest.
If you are not growing these in your own garden, your local farmers market is a great place to pick up these seasonal veggies to either eat or preserve. The best buy and taste on any fruit or vegetable is when it is in season. You can get even better deals on any produce that has a few blemishes which have no effect on the flavor. If you are going to can, freeze or dry them, just be sure to remove any blemishes first. Preservation garden
I pick what to have in our garden based on the harvest per foot of garden space needed. Our garden is incorporated into the flower garden mulch bed and in pots so we have to be choiceful on what to grow. Grow what you love to eat, too. It won't be a lot of fun to have a bumper crop of veggies you don't really like. How to decide what to plant for small spaces?
In pots, we have great luck with Egyptian walking onions (which can be harvested year round), peppers, eggplant, greens, sweet bay, bush cucumber, vine beans and celery.
I do use vertical space for the green beans and cucumbers, growing pole types on trellises whether grown in the garden or in a pot. You can also use trellises for squash or grow bush types that stay compact.
So, what is doing not so well in the garden this summer? Our tomatoes are doing just okay. Have had a couple die so far. May be voles. The voles seem to love the mulched flower beds! I grow tomatoes in the garden beds because even an extra large pot doesn't give enough support to the indeterminant types I like to produce well in a pot. If you are growing in a pot, be sure to get dwarf types so they don't outgrow the pot. Dwarfs stay small so you won't get as many tomatoes as you do from a regular size plant but you will get a few each week.
We had such a cool May that the eggplant, peppers, beans, squash and cucumbers were slow to get going. The summer squash is now producing. I planted Trombetta again as it doesn't have disease or pest issues in my garden. I also had volunteer what summer squash vines come up. Have never grown this variety before so it must have come in the compost I bought a couple of years ago. Have had a few fruits from the eggplants and the plants are getting to a good size. Got my first cucumber today. The snap beans are not producing many beans but the vines have filled back out so hopefully, they will kick in shortly.
 |
| Newly sprouted zucchini, ready to be transplanted |
I started extra tomato plants as they are so susceptible to fungal diseases in our humid summers and we have a healthy population of voles that play havoc on the roots. I planted this second batch out last month and they have tomatoes on them. Tomatoes will continue to produce up until a hard freeze so all the way through fall.
My pepper plants look nice and green. The Anaheims are producing peppers and continuing to flower. My sweet peppers are flowering. Peppers will produce all the way until there is a hard freeze. It seems their best month is September. They love warm days, cool nights and lower humidity. I grow the sweet peppers to snack on and freeze for football salsa. The Anaheims I am growing to dry and make chili powder out of.
The flea beetles are having their usual summer feast with my eggplants. They love to eat holes in the plant's leaves. They don't eat the fruits, but with the damage to the leaves can reduce the plants ability to produce fruits. We have purple and green varieties this year. I also bought a purple Japanese type. They are tender and sweet. Err on the side of picking early versus late. Leaving the fruits on too long makes the skins taste on the bitter side. You want to pick when the skin is glossy.
I have my pole bean vines in pots again this year. I plant them in extra large pots and put a trellis in the pot. They do decent in a pot but are much more productive in the garden bed. This year, I have not seen any pests or disease on the beans. I grow Blauhilde pole bean instead of the other Roma types for its disease resistance. Its lavender flowers are pretty, too. I am trying 1500 Year Old bean this year and it has only produced a few pods. Christmas Speckles lima bean has produced one harvest and it is flowering again. I grow these more for fun than to put away because it takes so many vines to get a good harvest for any dried bean. They say you don't need to fertilize beans after they are planted unless their leaves start yellowing. Growing beans I fertilized them a couple of weeks ago to give them a boost. Too much fertilizer will cause them to focus on greenery versus fruits. This is true for all fruiting plants. More is not necessarily better.
 |
| Beans on trellis in garden bed |
The first round of lettuce, sweet mustard and spinach bolted long ago. I left them to go to seed. I have many volunteer sweet mustard and lettuce plants coming up. Greens are heavy nitrogen users. I make sure to fertilize them monthly. I grow most of my greens in pots. Pots need to be fertilized about twice as often as garden beds. I always use natural organic fertilizers like Espoma or for an extra boost of nitrogen, blood meal or bat guana or liquid fish fertilizer.
A quick reminder, save the seeds from your best performers to plant next year! You can replant seeds from any heirlooms or open pollinated plants. What do the terms GMO, natural, heirloom, organic, hybrid really mean? Not only does it save you money, but it also gives you the plants that do the best under your garden and zone conditions. Only save seeds from your best fruits and only from disease free plants. Seed saving-fun, easy and a cost saver
No comments:
Post a Comment