Perfect weather

After a hot, wet July in which we saw over 10" of rain, August has started out warm and dry, with a couple days of nice soaking rain. We harvested our onions last weekend and they've been curing outside all week. We canned our first batch of tomatoes last week as well. Everything is looking very lush, and it's getting hard to keep up with eating everything that is turning ripe. Our single cucumber plant has produced over 20 cucumbers so far and is still going strong.

Currently harvesting: blueberries, carrots, tomatoes, basil, new potatoes, radishes, onions, bok choy, green beans, beets, swiss chard, broccoli, collards.

Morning harvest

This is the time of year that all the gardeners look forward to, when all the planning and preparation pays off. We've had a stretch of hot weather which seems to ripen tomatoes and cucumbers almost overnight. The sweet potatoes and winter squash vines are spreading quickly and may threaten to take over our patio by fall.

We also harvested our garlic last weekend. We hang them downstairs to cure, where it is relatively cool and dry, though there isn't much ventilation. We grew ten different varieties this year, and harvested around 70 heads. We planted the garlic in two different patches, since it is a natural pest repellent. It seemed to work very well next to our cabbage, which in the past had their seedlings ravaged by insects and later on were home to slugs. This year they were almost pest-free.

More berries

Three years after planting our blueberry plants, we are finally harvesting some fruit. The first year we pinched off the fruit blossoms as they formed so that the plants would devote their energy to developing and strengthening their root systems. The last two winters, rabbits have also nibbled on many of the bare branches when they were covered with snow.

But this year we've seen nice large clusters of blossoms which are now ripening. Blueberry plants take several years to reach their peak yield, but can produce for thirty years, so we hope to see a lot more berries in the future. Part of this first pint went into our favorite vehicle for blueberries, a plate of pancakes.

Deluge

We were soaked with 5 inches of rain on Friday and Saturday, bringing our monthly total to 7+ inches. The soil is saturated right now and the hot, humid weather is keeping it that way. There is also a deluge of raspberries, which is nice to see. We made some raspberry jam last weekend and have been freezing whatever we can't eat.

On the pest front, there has been an increasing number of Japanese beetles inhabiting the raspberry canes as well as the sugar snap peas and some of the perennials in the front yard. We had a hunting party this morning with a jar of soapy water and captured a couple dozen.

Extremes

June is behind us and the garden is in full swing. We ended up with 5 1/2 inches of rain for the month, which was less than last June's 8+ inches, but it still kept things wet for much of the time. The temperatures went from one extreme to the other, with a windy 100 degree day early in the month frying some of the tender seedlings. This year we have 32 different vegetables growing in the back yard, as well as five varieties of fruit and several herbs.

One of the challenges of having a garden in a small backyard is finding enough space to grow everything one would like. One of my favorite methods is planting vegetables together which mature at different times. Here is an example of that, where I've got cabbage interplanted with sweet potatoes. By the time the cabbage are mature and picked in July, the sweet potatoes, which aren't harvested until after the first frost, can spread their vines over the entire bed.

Currently harvesting: arugula, spinach, lettuce, strawberries, kohlrabi, radishes, beet greens, rhubarb, sugar snap peas, garlic scapes.

Strawberries

We harvested our first strawberries today, which because of the cool spring is a bit later than previous years. Two years ago we were picking them the first week of June and last year they were ripe in late May. The plants are loaded with blossoms, so it should be a plentiful harvest.

We decided to add more strawberries, so I dug up most of the creeping phlox which bordered two sides of our patio, but had become overrun with grass. We transplanted another 12 plants, which hopefully will start bearing next spring. I've been pinching off the flowers to allow the plants to concentrate their energy on developing the root system. Eventually this new plot will take over from the original plants as their productivity declines.

Cutworm

One of the more disheartening things a gardener can see when visiting the garden in the morning is the sight of a newly transplanted seedling laying prone on ground, as if it had been felled by some tiny lumberjack. This is the work of the cutworm, a small worm which chews through the stem of young seedlings at night. I've had cutworms eat both tomato and pepper plants in the past. When you find cutworm damage like this, you can often find the offender itself, curled up just under the soil level near the stem.

One of the recommended defenses against cutworms is to fashion some sort of collar around the stem, extending and inch above and below the soil level. Another is to wrap aluminum foil around the stem, which I've done to the rest of my tomato and pepper seedlings. If you start your own seedlings, it's a good idea to plant more than you need so that you'll have some in reserve to replace those that meet a fate like the one above.