Some Late Summer Garden Pictures

Considering the crazy weather we've had this summer and the onslaught of insects, my garden has turned out better than I ever thought it would. We've recently had decent amounts of rain, too, which I'm sure has helped immeasurably.

Here's an aerial view of the raised beds taken from my perch in hubby's office. (Or hanging out of one of his windows actually. He kept asking me to please not fall out. Whadda guy!)

Some beds have been cleaned out already . . . hence the sparse look. The three beds that look like they have black covers on them are planted out with cool weather fall crops like broccoli, spinach, Swiss chard, kohlrabi, kale and lettuce and have shade cloth covers on them.

This is some lettuce I planted several weeks ago. The only reason it looks this good or could survive in the heat we've had is because of the shade cover. That stuff really works.

Do you see the bed of Jerusalem artichokes way down at the end of the third row of raised beds? They have to be nine feet tall. Still no sign of flowering out though.

A very sad looking potato patch. It got hit with blight pretty hard. Especially the two rows in the center.

This part of the field garden shows the strawberry patch in the foreground. Just yesterday we cut down all the strawberry plants so they'll have a chance to make strong, healthy, new growth before frost. Beyond that patch is my little pumpkin pie pumpkins. Then sunflowers past that. On the other side of the sunflowers (which you can't see) are jack o' lantern pumpkins.

Here we've got corn in the right corner with Red Kuri squash in front of that and then a line of cosmos. None of my flowers have done well this year. The foliage part of the cosmos grew weird, there were very few flowers and the flowers that bloomed were malformed. Very strange.

Ha! I was so eager for these nasturtiums. They were supposed to be a mix of ivory and maroon blooms. Do you see any maroon blooms? Me neither.

I think I've got a good crop of yellow storage onions coming along. The red onions look pretty good, too.

This is the same variety of cherry tomato I've planted for several years. But, golly-wumpus, this year they are gargantuan in size! About three or four times the size they usually are. What gives with that?

They are just now starting to ripen. We had our first one this weekend. It had absolutely no taste. Nope. None. Zip. Zilch. No taste. Ain't that a boot in the butt?

Okay, this is getting too long. I'll post more garden pictures tomorrow. Promise.