N & C Midwest: August 2024

Full swing here in August, we are in the midst of a heat wave, and honestly it is keeping me out of the garden which needs WATERED!!!!!  Everything is looking wilty except the weeds and crabgrass!   

Got my garlic harvested late, a few heads are suitable for storage, most will end up in the dehydrator which is also good.  The peppers on the south side turned out to be a good move, but the white flies that I had last year did not come back this year.  Maybe the peppers scared them off!  I doubt it…

I have eggplants that need harvested, and tomatoes too.  Probably lots of other stuff if I can get a good look!  What do you have going on where you’re at?

Can't believe it is August already, and Fall will soon be here. Planted seeds for fall crops - Merlot Lettuce, Bunching Onions, Saxa 2 Radishes, and Kyoto Red Winter Onions.  The cucumber vines are starting to yellow as their season ends, and the pole beans are starting to bloom. Daily harvest of peppers, summer squash, and cucumbers.

I am hoping to get some lettuces and bunching onions in for Fall here, too.  My golden beets are ready, so will pick those today.  Pickled beets, here I come!

The Roma tomatoes are starting to ripen. Not enough to can yet, but it won't be long.

Pulled a few carrots for dinner this evening. We still have about half of the spring carrots to harvest, but the winter carrots are now sprouted and growing. I planted the Kyoto Red Winter Carrots for this fall.

I weeded, and picked a bunch of stuff too.  Cleaned up some diseased squash plants, put a tomato plant into the trailer, along with the squash plants.  That did give the remaining tomatoes some more air.  

Picked a bunch of Ping Tung eggplant, 3 patty pan squashes, big and cherry tomatoes, and I pulled a carrot from my south annex planters, and ate it!  It was yummy!  

Swiss chard is doing well, need to get out there and harvest some.  Very pretty plant.  Maybe sautéed with some of the eggplant!

First time I have tried growing a Cantaloupe plant in a tub, but it has 6 nice fruit on it.  Can't wait for them to ripen! This plant is in a 25 gallon mineral lick tub.   

I grow True Charentais, which is a nice original musk melon.  Actually, this is grown on a trellis.  I love it.  I normally don’t get more than a couple but anything is good!  

I think my watermelon died.

I also like Minnesota Midget, which is out there and going strong.  I get around 4 ish fruits from each plant, grown on a trellis.

August has been rough for me and my garden. We were out of town for the first 10 days of the month and my daughters came to water/harvest on and off during that time. Then I came down with COVID and honestly the fatigue is kicking my butt and keeping me from my garden goals. UGH!!!

Sitting here listening to a nice steady rainfall and admiring what you guys have been up to!!!

My cucumbers have been destroyed by cucumber beetles and need to be taken out. My second planting of summer squash was completely ripped out of the ground (I think by a squirrel) and my bell peppers aren't doing much. Gorgeous plants with NO PEPPERS.

On the bright side, my tomatoes are doing good, as well as my Italian grilling peppers, shishitos, hot peppers and pole/bush beans. Harvested 25 pounds of Kennebec potatoes and 15 pounds of Oneida Gold which I am super proud of!! Lettuce is looking good too! My fall carrots are coming along as well as my Brussel sprouts. Going to try and get some fall beets planted soon. 

Happy August!!!!

JAM23 wrote:Then I came down with COVID and honestly the fatigue is kicking my butt and keeping me from my garden goals. UGH!!!

Hate to hear that! Hope you will recover quickly, and get back into the grove.

Feel better and more energized in the future, JAM!

Fall is in the air.  The cucumbers have reached the end of their season, with the leaves yellowing and dying with very few cucumbers maturing. I cut off all of the plants at the soil level, pulled the vines off of the arbor and put them in the compost bin, refreshed the bed with new compost, and planted sugar snap peas in their place. The summer squash plants are starting to show the yellowing leaves as they are producing less squash, and the sweet potato vines are starting to die back indicating that it will soon be time to harvest the potatoes. Yes, fall is in the air.

Hoping to get outside this weekend and get some gardening tasks done. Thanks for the extra encouragement everyone!

Tomatoes are ripening quickly now - note to self, one currant tomato plant is enough for me.   

Transplanted some of the fall lettuce, mizuna, swiss chard and arugula into the planter.

Canned three pints of tomato sauce last evening from the Roma tomatoes. There are a hundred or more tomatoes still on the vines, so there will be a lot more sauce to come.

Congratulations on your tomatoes. I'm slowly pully mine out, but I at least was able to can 2 batches of salsa.

Not sure how many are out there, but a lot of peppers need picking!  They are red, which was what I was waiting on.  Some of the jalapeños are ready too.  And probably carrots, but I am confused about when to pull them—some sources say to wait. 

I literally cannot go out to my other garden—it has to be wrecked!

Scorpio Rising wrote:  And probably carrots, but I am confused about when to pull them—some sources say to wait.

Carrots can be pulled at almost any stage. Baby carrots are delicious, mature carrots are great sliced in salads or made into sticks for dipping, and over mature carrots make great candied carrots with brown sugar or maple syrup.

Most of our summer carrots have been pulled over the past couple months, but the winter carrot seeds were planted August 3rd and are no about 2" tall. I grow the Kyoto Red winter carrots, and they get sweeter after frosts.

The Blue Lake Pole Beans on the arbor have grown more this year than I have ever seen, and they are such a dark green healthy looking plants.

The arbor is built between two 12' beds. The right bed is mostly empty now except for some rouge strawberries on the far end, and the sugar snap peas just now sprouting at the base of the arbor. On the wood chips to the left of the arbor are Butternut squash.

In the bed below the beans are carrots that have not yet been pulled.

The beans from the inside of the arbor.

The leaves on the beans are huge.

Those are huge leaves!  

I picked a bunch of red bell peppers this morning, before I left for work.  Plus 2 carrots just to see the size—they are medium to small, so we will see!  They are supposed to be Tendersweet, but one was paler so it is not that variety!

When I planted a Nasturtium in the end of this bed so it could hang over the edge for the pollinators, I never expected it to take over half of the raised bed. When I transplanted it, it was so puny I didn't expect it to even grow. But, apparently once it got into the fresh compost it came to life. The other half of the bed has 9 pepper plants at one per square, and between the peppers and Nasturtium were Summer Savory plants. But, the Nasturtium has long since smothered all of the Savory plants - fortunately, we got enough cuttings to dry for our winter spice rack before they got smothered.

In spite of its aggressiveness, I still love the Nasturtium!