It’s been a trying year for the garden, to say the least.  The best thing about gardening is that there is always a next year.  There will always be another year to try new things and be successful in growing vegetables.

My garden though, is not ready to give up.

My surviving pole bean plants were putting out a few beans here and there- enough for the kids to get a snack, but then something began eating the actual beans- six feet in the air. I now suspect it was voles, as we have ’em.  But as a result, I stopped checking the bean plants.  Well, as it turned out, a handful of beans did grow- and they are huge!  Too huge for eating, but today I harvested and I will let them dry a bit and then have seed for next year.  The beans themselves are delicious and worth growing.  The real reason I harvested though is because some of my other bean plants have put out another round of blossoms.  Since the hot sticky weather passed, they want to grow again, so I wanted to encourage my plants to put out more beans.

By butternut squash is finally producing squash as well.  Crazy, but I have about six or seven baby squash out there.  I saw today that one has been nibbled on, and I really am doubtful as to whether there is enough growing time for them.  But I can dream, and I can spray the plants with soap spray to keep the bugs off.

My tomatillo actually has three lanterns on it.  After waiting all this time, it’s amusing to see it doing something.

I seem to have a serious shortage of bees in our yard.  Something I am going to have to remedy next spring by making sure I have some good attractors for them growing.   I suspect that many of our issues are from the lack of bees.

We also found a miracle in Zander’s garden patch.  A tiny, three-inch cucumber.  A small Poona Kheera managed to survive the baby bunnies.  It was deeply russeted, and ready for harvest, despite its diminutive size.  Everyone waited eagerly for me to wash off the prickles and carefully slice that tiny cucumber so everyone could get a taste.  Oh my, as delicious and crispy as we remembered.  Next year, we will grow more and they will be successful.

The tomato patch looks better and better everyday- provided you can ignore the damage from whiteflies.  I suspect this will be a good week for them, as it’s going to be toasty again.  The other day I picked a Black From Tula to let it sit on my counter- we haven’t tasted it yet.  Today I picked a Valiant, and decided to let the Brave General ripen on the vine for just a few more days- as seen in the picture above.  Dangling just above the general in a lovely cluster is my Gypsy tomato plant.

Earlier this week a neighbor shared some ripe tomatoes, so I went out to my garden and harvested some chard for a simple salad.  Tossed with some black olives and almond slices, it was wonderful to be eating something grown in the backyard.

I’ll leave this post with a picture of my tiny harvest today.  My pole beans that will be saved for seed.  My Black From Tula, my Valiant, and Zander’s teeny tiny Poona Kheera.  This is why we garden- the rewards are always unexpected.

I know it hasn’t been that long since I planted my tomato plants, but it really seems like it has been taking them forever to ripen. In a quick glance I found 6 that were starting to ripen. I am also suspecting that my malakite and green zebra are probably close too, I just didn’t have time to examine them that closely.

The first two pictures are from my two sungold plants. The first one is in a pot while the other is in the ground. I can’t believe the size difference between the tomatoes. The ones on the second plant have to have at least three times the mass of the first.

And here we have the royalty of the garden, the Golden King of Siberia. The biggest one is ripening, as well as one other just behind it to the right. We’ll see how it looks tomorrow, but judging from the amount of color already it should be ready to eat in a couple of days.

Next up is another Russian, the Cosmonaut Volkov. This one was hiding on me, I was very surprised to find a flash of pink. Seems like a pretty good sized tomato, and should be ready to eat by the weekend.

The last of my ripeners (I think I just made up a new word) is a yellow pear. Next year this will be replaced with Yellow Submarine, which is supposed to have a slightly better flavor. The yellow pear plant I keep having to prune back as it tries to take over the garden.

My peppers are doing great. I am debating picking some of the jalapenos so I get some more by the end of the season, but I really want them red. I had taken a picture of my tobasco plant which is finally poking some peppers up into the air but the camera battery died while snapping the last shot. The hot hungarian wax is going crazy, peppers everywhere. If hot pepper rings weren’t so cheap I would pickle some of them. As it is I will be saving them for salsa.

The sweet chocolate finally threw a few peppers too. Hopefully I can get one or two by the end of the growing season.

The last picture is one of me standing in my tomato plants. For reference I am 6’2″ tall, and most of them are as tall as me or better. I wish my cages were 7 feet tall!

A week in the woods was the death stroke to much of the garden.  Without me here everyday to spray liquid fence or cayenne pepper or soap spray, a good deal of the garden was descimated by critters.  And I mean descimated.  My new green bean patch- gone.  40-some little sticks are poking out to the sky with nary a leaf in sight.  My lettuce was completely shorn off, and most of the beet greens are gone too.  I may get a beet or two yet though.  The newly planted kale was digested by something from the insect world- and that is not a cabbage looper- I know what those are.  The scarlet runner beans had their stems snapped by rough winds, and the pole beans had their stems eaten through about 8 inches up.  I have about 4 pole bean plants still chugging along.

The butternut squash is looking okay, as is the delicata, but there are no fruit yet- as there are no fruit on the pumpkin.  The melons are all growing very slowly, and I don’t expect they will bear fruit, really.  The tomatillos are growing and pushing blossoms, but they’re not getting pollinated and are not setting fruit at all.  The peppers are mostly intact yet, although the fruit they bear is small.

The pots that I recently planted with chard, kale, lettuces and cucumbers have been obliterated by squirrels.  I put fresh dirt in the pots, and the squirrels proceeded to dig, dig, dig.  With a nut tree in the yard, they are constantly looking for places to bury their plunder.  I wish we could get rid of that nut tree.

But then there are these.

Those are on one of my Black From Tula plants.

And these are on one of my Woodle Orange plants.

And this is my Brave General.

Then, as I was tying up a few more branches on one of my plants, I spied this little fella below.

My trusty Sungold that I took from a sucker from those plants in my house.  My Sungold plant gave me my very first ripe tomato.  As I popped this gem into my mouth and savored the delicious pop of the skin and the sweetness of the juice, I experienced promise.  This one little tomato speaks of promises to come.  The rest of my garden may have succumbed to the never-ending parade of squirrels and rabbits, but I will have a tomato harvest.  It may be modest, at best, but I will enjoy tomatoes of all shapes, sizes and colors, and I will enjoy every single one.

In the meantime, plans are being made.  Next years garden will have to have fencing.  In multiple places.  The beds are going up.  We need to get away from tree roots galore, so we’re going up a good foot or so.  Where the existing bed heights are, we will attach fencing in-ground to prevent burrowing critters from digging up.  And then every garden bed will have a fence- and depending on the bed, a system in place for floating row cover as well.  We are trying to decide the best lay-out, but I have to confess, other than the tomatoes, I’m looking forward to starting over.  It’s rather saddening to walk out to the garden and take a peek.  Even my sage plant has met an untimely demise.  How did that happen?  I have no idea, but just like that, the plant is void of life.

Next year, the garden will be wonderful, but for the remainder of this year, I will be concentrating my efforts completely on tending and enjoying the tomato patch.