Veggie Garden Update-August 09

Skeeter's Georgia Veggie Garden Update:

The compost bin in my Georgia Garden held a surprise for me this year. A potato plant sprouted from composted potato peels! I was so happy that I babied it to death. That's right, I killed the voluntary plant. It was a drought time of year and I was so afraid it would dry out that I over watered it and killed the thing.
See how moist it was when I cut it open? A sure sign of over watering on my part. Oh well, live and learn. Sigh...

We are gathering Roma and German Queen tomatoes along with Jalapeno peppers. These were planted on the outskirts of the Semi-Formal flower garden.
Our neighbor, which was motivated to plant a garden this year, had so many tomatoes that they are giving them away. Here was a batch they handed over the fence to us. I blanched and peeled them and they are in the freezer waiting for the day when we no longer have any fresh maters on the vine.
It started out just as last year, too wet and soggy in the spring to plant in the veggie garden. We were so discouraged that we were not going to put anything in the soggy area at all. But I could not let the few slips I grew in containers from seed go to waste. I put a English cucumber, a gourd, some beans, 4 squash and the purple tomato in the plot of fenced in soil. The Garden was late in getting a start but as you can see, we plucked cucumbers off the vine recently. This Anaheim pepper was the first to produce with the sweet peppers on the outskirts of the flower garden.
I made German Cucumber Salat with the cucumbers and they were so yummy.The Green, Red and Yellow Sweet Peppers are doing great! We started to harvest them yesterday along with more Anaheim and Jalapeno hot peppers and a few tomatoes. Here you see the Anaheim Peppers have a friend keeping guard for pesky insects. The baby Anole Lizard is green but will become brown in color once on a brown surface. Can you see him? They camouflage so well on the green leaf.
And lookie here Dan, I finally have tomatoes growing from the Cherokee Purple Tomato seed you gave me! Yippee... Not quite purple yet but I am patiently awaiting the color change.
And low and behold the gourds have decided to produce for me as well. The beans did not produce and the squash all died out from the borers again this year. But we are happy with the few things we harvested and may continue to plant more next year! We know what will and will not work so we will stick with the things we know will grow well for us in the Garden... Tina, this one is for you, just look at the Banana Tree! Not the one you gave me that died (sigh) but the one we have babied along for 3 years now. It is happy in its new spot and as you can see thriving for us. Look how tall it is compared to the Saint which was kind enough to pose for me.
The trunk (or is it a stalk?) size is amazing to us since this nanner has had a sad life with us until now. See the baby plants popping up around the base? A very happy Banana along with the Saint and I, In the Garden...

Now lets see what is going on in Tina's Tennessee Garden shall we....

Tina's Tennessee Veggie Garden Update:

It seems like just yesterday we posted our vegetable garden update so it is hard to believe it has been a whole month! Here is a long shot of the vegetable garden as it looks today. There are three gates into the vegetable garden proper. You can just see one next to the round millstone like stone in the lower middle part of the picture above. It is the main entry into the garden. Behind where I am standing is our deck and house. To the right of the millstone and to the left of the gate is a new Sunny Perennial Border. This area gets the most sun in my garden (excepting the driveway) so I decided to plant some sun lovers there. It is a good spot since it is on the north side of the vegetable garden and does not shade the vegetables. I will post on this garden at some point but wanted you to know the vegetable garden is actually inside of this large border and get you oriented to its layout. You can see the A-frames inside of the fenced area but you first must look past the perennial border. There is a problem with shade though even though it is not from the perennial border. Can you see the problem plants?? Mr. Fix-it sees it and says those bananas have to go! They are positively massive and still growing. They are on the left side of the picture behind the red leaved cannas. Those cannas are outside of the vegetable garden in the sunny perennial border. The bananas have spread rather quickly inside of their container in the vegetable garden. When I planted them three years ago I thought the shade would be welcomed in the vegetable garden by both the vegetable plants and more importantly by me. I still love the shade in the veggie garden but my vegetables are not thriving. Sigh. Let us see just how they are doing now and keep in the back of your mind those bananas have to go at some point.

It has not been a great year at all. First the big news. Remember that watermelon I thought I had growing in the veggie garden last month? Well, it turned out to be a pumpkin! Guess that'll teach me to pay better attention to what I plant! Ha. Right.
The peppers are slowly growing. I've not picked too many of them. In fact, one whole plant perished. I am not sure why. This is also when I planted my cucumbers and zucchini. Both of those crops are coming in well though I've yet to harvest a single thing from them! I think the baby cucumber above looks most promising. The good thing about planting these warm weather crops late is the fact that most of the time these crops have passed by now and unless you use succession planting and plant more late in the season you will be sans cucumbers by this point. This will not happen here this year and I will most likely always plant cucumbers late. So far no signs of disease or pests have reared their heads amongst my cucumbers or zucchini.

Tomatoes are still coming in; albeit slowly. I am harvesting a great deal of cherry tomatoes and a pear shaped tomato, as well as some yellow tomatoes. But overall the tomato plants are long and thin. Not at all usual and quite disheartening. The yellow wax beans were planted the end of June and are growing like gangbusters. I am not really sure how to eat wax beans and don't know why I planted them because I don't like them. There is some sweet basil mixed in with the above vegetables too. The yellow squash were pulled and are long gone. They finally succumbed to borers. The ornamentals I planted in the vegetable garden like stevia, basil, catnip and zinnias are doing well. They show no sign of letting up. I said I would not grow gourds this year simply because I had tons from last year's vegetable garden. I haven't even gotten around to painting them yet. But how could I resist gourds?? They grow well in almost all conditions, even part shade and drought conditions and are just plain fun once harvested. This year I planted a white ornamental variety of gourds and a small bottle type gourd. Both varieties are doing well. The small white one is pictured above. I hope it gets big enough to do some crafts with this winter. We shall see.

That will do it for this month's vegetable garden update. How are your vegetables growing....

in the garden....