New England, August 2016

Your squash may have been hit by the Squash Vine Borer (SVB).  Do a google of the images and see if that is what you had.  They start drooping and die pretty fast.  The SVB love squash and zucchini.

Rock, Nice commentary on you and your garden.

Rock, thanks for sharing your photos and your thoughts. Looks like you have had good success overall.

Summer, summer, summer, you turned me upside down!  

Nice!

According to several emails I've received from various gardening websites, the first average frost date for my location is about a month away.     Fortunately, weather forecasters in the region are predicting a warmer-than-usual autumn for the North East.  I can only hope!

Of all the things I've planted this year only the zucchini has produced as expected (lost only one to vine borer, the other two are still going strong), everything else has been slow-to-start, just now blooming and setting fruit.

Given the disappointing state of my tomato transplants, a wonderful surprise has been the unplanned sprouting of tomato and pepper plants among the trellised crops in the kitchen garden.  Some of the tomatoes appear to be grape or roma types, while others have yet to show fruit; all are volunteers from compost. I love the mystery!

In earlier posts I promised picture updates, so here's a shot of the kitchen garden from this morning (about 30 feet wide - lots of foliage and blossoms, not much produce, yet):


Trellis crops from left-to-right: peas, summer squash, watermelon, red malabar spinach, cucumber, zucchini, cantaloupe; Blue tub crops from left-to-right: corn, bush beans and peppers, okra and peppers

And here are some of the mystery tomatoes:



Another happy success (not pictured), are the potted ground cherries growing on my deck; they're full of lanterns and a few ripen every day.  Ground cherries are my fun, new-to-me crop this year.  I was so excited to discover them, I grew enough bushes to share plants with neighbors who were unfamiliar with the fruit.  While most of my crops have struggled, with disappointing results, the ground cherries just make me smile.

I'm looking forward to next year....
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Pretty, and so lush, GB!   Like Rock's garden.  You folks up there were lucky to have a bit of rain this summer, eh?

I had a volunteer like yours last year.  It was delicious.  I saved seeds and was then reminded that grocery store cherry toms are probably hybrids so I didn't try them this year.  Maybe some year...

Now this is a volunteer that I thought was a Roma at first but the first 3 are completly round so I don't know now.
We'll be taste testing soon.

This is yesterdays harvest sans tomatoes and greens:
I'm glad those 2 silly carrots didn't run away before I could harvest them.

The collard, radish & daikon seeds that I sowed the other day were up yesterday:
Sowed heavily in case the pill bugs wanted to munch on a few.  

The  lettuce box is limping along, surprisingly. I see lots of fall salads in my future.    


It's been a touch and go summer on ol' Cape Cod, especially with my self enforced water restriction.  But the weather is changing a bit now so hopefully everything will perk up and grow, grow, grow.

CC

Fortunately for the bees, zinnias laugh at heat and drought conditions:

CapeC......Thanx for the latest photos.  I love 'walking' thru your garden.

Ginger.....Thanks for your photos as well.  I nearly missed them.

Ginger and CC, Thanks for the wonderful tours. CC, Do you know the variety for the zinnia?

sanderson wrote:Ginger and CC,  Thanks for the wonderful tours.  CC,  Do you know the variety for the zinnia?

+1

Zinnia is CA Giant.  I've grown only those for years and love them!  They are outstanding every year and one pack has about 6+ different colors in it.

The only downside is that the slugs LOVE them, too.  I start them in pots and get them about 1 ft tall before transplanting into the gardens.  Slugs will still munch on them but they don't seem to go that high.

Nice,  CC!  I agree.  I water 1x/wk.  that is it.  If it rains I don't water.  I can go broke without that!

CapeCoddess wrote:Now if those lousy pill bugs would keep their little mouths off anything that sprouts I'll be in business...

I still have the fantastical image in my head of rolypollies being cute, little, playful detritus-eaters that love and respect my seedlings. But I keep hearing everyone saying "yeah, they love seedlings alright, they're all like "RAWRAGHARAHMNOMNOMNOM!" It rained last night, and I'm pretending it was enough that I don't have to water and have free time this morning to spend doing frivolous activities like illustrating the contrast between these two views that popped into my head because of CC's phrasing:

So friggen cute, Beetles!  Did you draw that?  On the computer? LOVE the onomatopoeia - so perfect. LOL

I harvest greens and toms every day now on an as-need basis.  This is todays harvest - chard, beet greens, collards, 1 Gilbertie:
The little beets will go into the dehydrator with some others shriveling up in the fridge.  They make THE BEST little 'raisens', and in salads will soak up the dressing and are to die for!

This weeks Vegnotes from UMass:
https://ag.umass.edu/sites/ag.umass.edu/files/newsletters/august_25_2016_vegetable_notes.pdf

Beetles, Cute sow bugs! Now, if they will just keep their mouths off my greens!

CapeCoddess wrote:So friggen cute, Beetles!  Did you draw that?  On the computer? LOVE the onomatopoeia - so perfect. LOL

The little beets will go into the dehydrator with some others shriveling up in the fridge.  They make THE BEST little 'raisens', and in salads will soak up the dressing and are to die for!

Yup - an old copy of CorelDraw running on the old desktop.

Oh, wow - beet-'raisins' sound amazing! I'm going to have to try that, even if I need to buy some at the farmer's market.

BeetlesPerSqFt wrote:

Yup - an old copy of CorelDraw running on the old desktop.

Oh yes ... CorelDraw. Interestingly, the Corel Corporation offices are just 8 kilometres by car from my house here in Ottawa (which is sometimes called Silicon Valley North), Canada.

GDD and garden IPM info.

http://www.ipmofnh.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Insect-Growing-Degree-Days.pdf