August Update

Well, August was a time of great successes as well as impending failures. We had more beans than we knew what to do with, a massive amount of squash and cukes (Cyn made some truly amazing pickles with some of our own hot pepper vinegar) and beautiful tomatoes before The Trouble set in. We eked out a decent little crop of onions and leeks, we saw the onset of winter squashes and pumpkins, plus the fattening up of vast amounts of melons.

August brought the Okra Avalanche, with every day requiring us to harvest a basket full of Clemson Spineless and Red Burgundy which nearly overwhelmed. Sadly, August also brought with it bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. And some diseases, like Early Blight and Fusarium Wilt. We'll have a post about the bugs and what we did right/wrong very soon. It was a dry month which presented some challenges with making sure everything got a drink, so we learned about our layout problems and will address those next season.

Overall, we're pleased with how things went, even though there was never enough time to get everything done under the searing mountain sun.

Enjoy the photos Cynthia took of the Veggie Ranch in full action:

Portrait of a Zucchini

One of many Black Widow Spiders in the garden

Moon and Stars melon with blossom

Royal Burgundy bush beans

Cherokee Wax bush beans

A multitude of garden gems

Dragon's Tongue bush beans

One delicious table

Italian Red Onions

Rattlesnake pole beans blooming

Crazy purple-pink corn tassels, pre-insect invasion

Corn bursting like fireworks against the August sky

Golden Crookneck, just before the Great Insect War began in earnest

Edisto 47 melons coming in nicely

Okra blossoms

Pumpkin flower (these are really huge)

Dry Black Turtle Beans

Royal Burgundy with blossom

Dragon's Tongue, with tiny garden spider hitchhiker

Butternut Squash blossoms exploding with bees

One of the multitude of Morning Glory flowers that spread throughout the garden curling around the lima beans

July Photos

Queen Anne's Lace

Corn tasselling

Thanks, bees

8 Ball zukes

Golden Crookneck

Sunset, with flowers

Two of our CSA baskets

Red Thumb Fingerlings

Sugarbaby melons coming in

Royal Burgundy bush beans

Potato trio

Limas and Cherokee Wax bush beans

The garden

Close up of CSA basket, with cukes, zukes, herbs and more

A row of squash

Delicious

Country morning

July...

We've been fighting the aphids and the flea beetles and the caterpillars, but so far we're winning. We've started our fall transplants in the greenhouse, and are getting ready to till the fall plots in the garden and finish up the flower beds around the cabin. We appreciate our CSA folks who understand where we're at, and we look forward to hitting the markets by month's end.

We've been finding arrow heads and scrapers in the dirt as we've dug and furrowed our rows, which is an amazing thing. To hold an artifact from the Cherokee who roamed these mountains so long ago...the mind reels with the history, the tragedy, all of it contained in a small, carefully crafted piece of stone buried for all these years until we dug it up...

On the art front, we've got our paintings and photos coming along and we'll post some pix soon.

Enjoy these new photos of the crops as they grow...

black eyed peas

sweet corn

moon and stars melons

lemon cukes

ronde de nice zucchini

black eyed susans in the pasture

green zebra tomatoes

the pasture with rainbow slice

A Double Rainbow With Dogs

June update...

It rains a lot in June here in the mountains. But we've got everything in, with photos coming soon. The potatoes are giant and doing very well, five different types; the bush beans are up and growing vigorously, four or five different kinds; pole beans, squash, cukes and kale; ten or eleven different kinds of tomatoes, about fifty plants worth; two brocs and two cabbages; ten different peppers in fifty foot rows with some okra mixed in for separation; melons and eggplants and more.

The hardest part was running a big ol' tiller over four thousand square feet of dirt. Twice. But now we can maintain it, fight the flea beetles and slugs and caterpillars and bunnies and raccoons and crows and deer, and then we can eat.

We'll be at the market soon, and we're working on our next step in the evolution of The Veggie Ranch.

Stay tuned.