Finished up the garden this month and pulled all the rest of the veggies and trimmed dead flowers. Did a few more veggie giveaways with the last hundred pounds or so of tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers.

Well, it's getting that time for a lot of the garden to be winding down. I pulled up all the squash, carrots, beans, cucumbers, and eggplant. Leaving the tomatoes and peppers for just a little bit longer, although the tomatoes got a huge trim. Had a day where I worked in the garden and folks could come by and pick up freshly picked veggies. Gave away multiple garden carts worth of veggies that day.

Found out that the problem with the pumpkins (and then the squash and cucumbers) was beetles. I got some garden dust to treat them, but the infestation was huge. 

From June through September of last year, we gave away hundreds of pounds of veggies to the community. We posted in neighborhood facebook groups, got word out by mouth, had items out by our sidewalk, etc. These veggies included:

The flowers in the one bed have really taken off, especially the sunflowers and zinnia. Starting to have some issues with pumpkins rotting. They're too big for it to be a pollination issue, so something else is going on.

We had so many tomatoes coming in at once that we donated a ton of them to families and then made another big batch of spaghetti sauce. Our heirloom tomatoes love to produce funny looking tomatoes. 

Photos taken Sept 2 - 13, 2022

In addition to growing veggies, I absolutely love growing flowers. And before we were even moved in, I was buying flowers to go into various parts of the yard. I spent a lot of time this year cutting up grass and pulling weeds so that I could create new flower beds. Some are still in pots awaiting a place to go, as we had work we had to do with regards to drainage in the yard. But hopefully next year most of it will get into the ground.

Our son loves succulents and sedums, so we've bought a lot of those as well.

Plants are just eating up all this warm weather. Now that it's getting more hot and humid outside, powdery mildew has started showing up. I bought some fungicide to help with the issue.

When you've got a bunch of zucchini, peppers, carrots, and tomatoes, what do you do? Make homemade spaghetti sauce!

Photos are from August 11 - 29, 2022.

I absolutely love roses. I had some in the apartments, but they were all mini roses that I picked up in tiny 1" pots and grew from there. Several were killed thanks to bratty kids, so I didn't have much left when we moved in. My husband helped me to create a big rose garden where a large bush used to be. There was already a huge red rose bush there when we moved in, so we knew that roses would do great in the area. Some of my roses that I already had were nearly dead and we didn't think they would make it. Not only did they all make it - but they absolutely thrived.

Pumpkins have started growing like crazy - vines and baby pumpkins everywhere. With the hot weather has come a lot of ripening of the tomatoes and lots of peppers to pick.

Photos are from August 2 - 9, 2022.

It's crazy how fast the items in the new beds have been growing. Had some blossom end rot issues, as there is so much zucchini growth in the one planter. Had to add some fertilizer to increase the calcium and magnesium content.

Photos are from July 22 - 29, 2022.

As you can see, there is a lot of growth across the beds. The plants that we moved into the new beds are much happier and are finally growing again. Lots of flowers everywhere, which means lots of bumble bees, too!

Photos are from July 11 - 22, 2022.