It’s August and while this has been such a strange, odd summer in so many ways, the garden has chugged along just as it always does, with many successes and a few frustrations as well. I love watching the beauty unfold in the garden, every season bringing something different to the table!
While I do have flowers growing in the field, though not as many this year as in years past, I do a lot of planting of flowers mixed in with the vegetables and herbs. They can be very helpful to one another with pests, diseases and, of course, beauty! I love this combination of borage and beets.
I tend to plant edible nasturtiums all around the garden as they can be very helpful with pests, are beautiful in salads and the foliage is gorgeous in arrangements. My favorite foliage is Alaska mix.
We also plant marigolds among the herbs. I love the lemon thyme with this French Vanilla variety of marigold.
The tomatoes are finally producing in abundant glory and this year is a good year so far! This is the first year that we’ve tried training some of them over an arch (see the first picture) and so far, so good! It makes picking the small ones so much easier.
We are on our third round of planting lettuces. We have had extreme heat and humidity so some of them bolted but nonetheless, it’s nice to have lettuce for salads and BLT’s.
The beans have also produced, in spite of a crazy, windy storm coming through and knocking them over! Also, we’ve been overwhelmed with cucumbers. I grew dill along with the cucumber and they were so lovely together.
The Swiss chard is as beautiful as ever and together with the zinnias are adding a pop of color amongst all the green!
While we’ve had lots of great harvests we’ve had a few that haven’t done as well. For the life of me I cannot seem to grow healthy, decent sized eggplants. They just get eaten alive! I’ve been happy to be able to harvest even a few.
And, of course, our sweet ducks and new chicks are a fun addition to the mix. Though, we have heavy suspicions that we ended up with a rooster…
Finally, we’ve gotten pounds and pounds of blackberries!
So tell me, what’s in your garden?
