Garden update : August 2010

Well, it's the time of year when the garden is in full bloom. Since I normally post a garden update every year, why should this year be any different?

First, the bean and tomato jungle:

What happened here was that I planted beans in some of my garden beds and a bunch of tomatoes self-seeded from last year's terrible tomato season (when a lot of tomatoes fell to the ground prematurely) and the tomato plants grew in between the bean plants. It'll be a challenge to pick, but they seem to complement each other nicely:

Next is corn. This was an experiment, since I've never planted it before. Some stalks are doing better than others and I'm not sure if any of them will produce large corn cobs. I didn't use any fertilizer, but it was good weather for corn -- hot and humid all summer -- if not for people:

And here we have a cucumber growing in a tree. Of course, cucumbers don't grow on trees. But the cucumber vine climbed the tree and it definitely looks that way!

Although the red tomatoes indicate to the contrary, the health of the plants doesn't. My tomatoes did poorly this year. It looks like an infection of some kind, but some of the smaller plants were eaten through by insects. I don't really have any excuses because I don't think it was a bad year for tomatoes:

The hardest work of the year was planting this hedge row of cedars, which are doing very well as far as I can tell:

Oregano interspersed with weeds:

The patio, which I also finished off this year -- surrounded with cedars, planted annuals, and mulched around the edges:

One of three or four pumpkins I've spotted in the undergrowth so far:

Pumpkins 2 and 3:

Raspberry (a new plant this year):

And a zucchini or squash -- not sure yet. I've only found one so far, but most of my squash plants were eaten by something when they were very young. Only one survived. Since I had planted both squash and pumpkin and they look very similar, I wasn't sure whether the squash or pumpkin had survived. It turned out to be the pumpkins.

Well, that's it for another year!

Garden vegetables: not doing too badly, considering the cooler growing weather this year

The yellow tomatoes are heirlooms and the others are hybrids. The beans are from the one bean seed that wasn't eaten by animals shortly after planting!

Also, one of my tomato beds mostly died off for some reason, while the one directly opposite looks like a jungle.