Summer Garden Notes, August 5, 2015

Slowly but surely the summer garden is being put to bed.  This week we retired the okra plants, mostly because we had so much okra I could not fit another bag in the freezer.  Whew!  It was almost a shame to destroy such beautiful plants, but the deer just love them, so they had a nice big treat for a couple of days.  And we need to get the garden ready for the fall.

I'm slowly cutting back the tomato plants to two that I plan to keep in the fall garden.  I'm keeping the Snow White, for sure.  It is my absolute favorite cherry tomato this year.  This weekend I pulled the two Sleeping Lady plants out, and this morning the Juane Flamee went.  Now we're down to 6 tomato plants.
The Cherokee Purple has been pumping out some of the biggest tomatoes -- these two are about 1-1/2# together.

I've moved all of the gourds that had been sitting out by the garden in to the potting shed to continue drying.  Most are drying nicely, but I've lost a few that rotted instead of drying.

I'm saving some seeds from the asparagus long beans.  These were good but they have to be picked very young in my opinion.  I'm kinda picky about my beans.

I've started some of the plants for the fall planting in September.  These are going to be several types of broccoli and cauliflower, and Bok Choy. The fall garden will be an "eat fresh" garden, I'm only planting a few of each thing and don't plan to have to do a lot of processing of produce.  The fall and winter are just too much fun to be stuck in the kitchen!

 Rapini Broccoli, Early Purple Broccoli, Romanesco Broccoli (all new seed from SeedsNow) and DeCicco Broccoli (Southern Exposure Seed Exchange seeds from 2013, so we'll see how they do.)

The cauliflower are All-Year Cauliflower (SeedsNow), Snowball X (American Seed Co.) and Green Macerata (Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds from 2014.)

And from SeedsNow, Bok Choy.

They are out in the greenhouse.  I'm not covering them since it gets plenty hot in here during the day.  In fact, I'm running a fan in there during the heat of the day, and may have to put a shade cloth over it if we have many more days like today.  Whew! Good thing seeds like it warm.

I've also started some onion and leek seeds to put in the same bed as the garlic this fall.  These are Sweet Spanish Onion and Giant Musselburgh Leeks from SeedsNow.

 These are out in the greenhouse now too.

More to come this weekend!