August garden check-in

 We have actually been able to eat some garden produce, so we can declare this year's garden not an entire failure. Tomatoes and lettuce, the old reliables.

Results so far are not great, thanks to my late start. Still, hope lives. For example, in the carrot patch. 

When I planted it initially, I covered half with a piece of old bedsheet. The covered ones germinated well, the rest almost all failed. So I covered and replanted the other half, and got most to germinate, though a critter dug up much of that after I uncovered them. The good ones are supposed to be ready, per the seed packet, but they are still too small to eat.

The item in the upper right corner is a mint plant. So far it hasn't followed through on its threats to take over the garden.

Beans! 

This is a new bed this year. It was to be all beans, but I ran out of seeds and unwisely filled it out with some snap peas I had left over. The beans went nuts and have taken over, though the peas still struggle underneath the bean canopy. I have both bush beans and pole beans, which explains the trellis.

They are starting to blossom, and maybe they will be worthwhile.

Cukes and Okra

The cucumber/okra bed is a bright spot. Cukes are a Seed Savers variety allegedly developed for Russian dacha gardens. They seem happy here, and I have the first visible fruit this weekend.

Salad?

The salad garden is struggling. Much of the lettuce never germinated, and the attempted spinach failed entirely. Even the radishes are not doing great. Enough lettuce did go to get about two salads a week, but it's still a disappointment.

Tomatoes

The tomatoes got off to a promising start, but are now yielding poorly after the initial crop. As usual, cherry tomatoes are the most persistent.

Squash

The most fun part this year is a new squash bed I started in some waste space. The first batch was wiped out by critters. Most of the second batch survived the chipmunk (?) raids, and there are now some nice blossoms from the "Des Moines" variety of acorn squash from Seed Savers.

Will my hopes be squashed? We will see.