The squash is starting to overwhelm

In the past week I've harvested four eight-ball zucchini and a couple costata romanesca. Two of the eight-ball sort of got away from me visually so they're way bigger than eight-balls! The tendrils from all of the winter squash I planted are going nuts and making me reluctant to venture too far into the garden. It's difficult to get to the other end because of all the squash obstacles.

The current crop of spinach is finished, as are the peas. The pole beans are just starting to be pick-able, and I finally found some teeny tomatillos!!! Maybe I'll get some after all this summer. I have lots of tomatoes on the vines, both cherry & others, but all are still green. I used some of my dill, basil, and chives to flavor some homemade salad dressing, and I can still smell the dill on my fingers - love that smell!

The cabbage worms have arrived via their mother the cabbage moth, and are, as usual, voraciously chewing their way through my cabbage plants. They were late this year so may not do as much damage as usual. I've killed about 40 or 50 so far, and have also harvested one head of cabbage that didn't look too heavily chewed on.

I'm going to try some season-extending techniques this fall with row covers and hoops, so I can get some greens (spinach & lettuces) a little later. It'll be an interesting experiment that I hope works. I don't know if I'm quite as ambitious as Eliot Coleman (http://www.fourseasonfarm.com/) to try to grow throughout the winter, but at least will try a few months in the fall & spring. It'd be great if it succeeded as it would mean home-grown salads in November!

Once again this spring I planted some morning glory seeds, and in the image is the resulting lovely flower. They don't like the heat we've gotten this summer, a little more than usual it seems, but appear to getting accustomed to it and are blooming now. Some of the m.glory seeds from two summers ago have germinated also (volunteers), so I have morning glories popping out in lots of places.

Harvesting continues....

This year has been extremely productive for certain vegetables - spinach, lettuce, squash (eight-ball zucchini & costata romanesca), radishes, swiss chard, onions, peas, and probably more that I'm not remembering. It's great having a salad with more than half of the ingredients "locally" picked! I have some small raspberries that I hope will ripen before the first frost. And lots of tomatoes too, plus tomatillos, which I haven't grown before. There are dozens of little blossoms on the tomatillos, but I see any little tomatillos yet. Since I haven't ever seen one growing, I may be missing it due to lack of familiarity....

My cabbage plants aren't being chewed to pieces yet by cabbage worms, and for a while I was noticing that the cabbage butterflies were nowhere to be found. But they have now found the garden, and I expect to start seeing little dastardly caterpillars any day.

I planted about 8-10 squash plants this year which may have been a mistake because now I have squash tendrils winding everywhere in the garden and blocking the sun from other vegetable plants.

My perennials are doing pretty good, depending on which garden they're in. The front garden is still low in nitrogen and is sort of weeny-looking, but everything else looks good.

Caddy, the 16-year-old dog, slows down by the day. Since her mobility has declined we seldom walk beyond the Veteran's Center, which means I haven't been around Home Lake for a few months. Wildlife observations are in decline as a result. When I was at the Rio Grande SWA last week though, I did see a couple hawks and a cow elk - the latter I have NEVER seen at the SWA. It was great to take my first run after the SWA re-opening on July 15; it always feels like I'm seeing the area for the first time.

Yah, more rain!

Lengthy absence caused by vacations & spending too much time on computer at work!
My vegetable garden experienced a sudden growth spurt this past weekend, over the 4th of July. Returning from a three-day absence, it was surprising to see how so much growth had occurred over such a short time. Squash tendrils are beginning to snake through the garden, peas are nearly ready to pick, and more & more spinach is ready to harvest. Radishes will soon be ready, as will the greens I planted not long ago. The cabbage worms haven't found my cabbage yet this year which I'm marveling at - by this time they've always been chewing away for some time. Weeds aren't out of the ordinary so far even though we've had a bit of rain.
My raspberry plants in the north part of the backyard are steadily growing taller and will need to be trellised soon.
The milkweeds in the "shrub garden" are expanding their range and may need to be reined in a bit - maybe next year.
Tomatillos are my experiment this year, never having grown them before. The two plants that survived the seedling stage are doing better than my tomato plants.
Our nighttime temperatures this summer so far have seldom gotten out of the 40's, not great for peppers and tomatoes.
Another experiment I'm trying this year is to start batches of spinach & radishes & lettuce later in the growing season to see if I can get a harvest in late autumn, using a small hoop structure to protect them against the cold/frost. It'll be fun to see how that goes!

Onions

Finally harvested all of the remaining onions, carrots, and brusselsprouts. I ended up with about three milk crates (size to the left) full of Walla Walla onions. Some were as big as an infants' head. I learned after the fact that Walla Wallas are not good storage onions, so have given some away, may dry a bunch, and will try to use the rest.
My carrots taste great - just the way carrots should taste. Their appearance may be a bit off-putting (little spurs jutting out, pimples, more) but their flavor is such genuine CARROT.
For next year I'll have to rethink growing brusselsprouts - cabbageworms are such a pain, and it's essential to keep after them continuously to avoid holes and little worms burrowed into the sprouts. They don't seem quite as drawn to cabbages, so maybe I'll just grow a few of those next summer and give b-sprouts a rest for a year.
I ordered a shipment of planting garlic that should be arriving soon; ordered more than last year. This year's garlic turned out very well, just not enough.
I suspect I will change what I plant next year quite a bit. I also need to move all of my raised beds away from the 6'-tall privacy fence that shades them from the south; the soil in those beds stays cold too long, because it's out of the sun into the growing season. Should have thought of that when I set them up......

Pollinators are happy!

I spent a while out in the vegetable garden yesterday - watering, picking cabbage worms, watching all the little insects flitting around, and becoming enamored with the swallowtail butterfly that kept visiting my Mexican sunflower (torch tithonia). I was commenting to someone at work that I had seen so few butterflies this year, I was beginning to think something was wrong (I guess I meant something besides the copious quantities of pesticide that are used in this agricultural region).
But all it takes is some time out in the garden and a pair of open eyes. The pollinators LOVE my torch tithonia - this is an annual plant I grow from seed. Usually I have difficulty growing it from seed, at least here in Colorado. But this year I tried a different technique: I sowed many more seeds in indoors starter pots than I usually do, so had many more surviving seedlings. I even had enough plants to give away a couple. Along with being a great pollinator attractant, the seeds will also attract birds later. It's also a beautiful plant.

I harvested my first brusselsprouts yesterday, along with green beans, one red cabbage, and some cherry tomatoes. I also removed the last of the row covers from my cabbage-family plants; I figured any damage that occurs from cabbage worms I can mostly nip in the bud from there on out. Turns out the moths had gotten under the row covers, since I did have some damage already. Had to go on a killing spree in search of cabbage worms . . .

More worm stuff

Have been picking and smashing cabbage worms (normally, I'm not a violent person, but I really don't want to relinquish another harvest to the critters). Obviously, I'm not averse to hand picking!

I have a neighbor on the next street over who also has several plants in the brassica family, and she has NO problems with these guys; I think it's a matter of them not having yet found her plants and focusing totally on mine!

We've had about about 4/10" of rain the past 24 hours so irrigation of the vegetable garden isn't necessary for at least another day or so; the mostly cloudy & coolish conditions are another reason not to water.

I'm including a picture of what I suspect is cabbage worm poop - don't know what else it is. Thought maybe it was eggs but their appearance doesn't jive with what I've read about cabbage worm eggs.

Rampaging cabbage worms

My house has an attached, enclosed space I call a "sunroom" or a "greenhouse" depending on my mood & the season. It makes a great workspace for working on gardening-type activities; it has a dirt floor, it's airy (sometimes too much so) and bright. On both ends it's enclosed partly in glass, and most of the reminder is separated from the outdoors by window screen material, so it's mostly free of mosquitoes. It gets hotter than Hades in the middle of summer because of the fiberglass roof.

Anyway, last year I lost my entire brusselsprout crop to cabbage worms, so I vowed to do something different this year. At first I was going to put row covers over all the plants to prevent the moths from laying eggs, but then I decided instead to put a bunch of my brusselsprout transplants in the "greenhouse". Well, the plants look beautiful for once because they aren't all riddled with worm holes, but the brusselsprouts themselves are these little teeny things, about pinhead-size. I'm guessing the heat has pretty much prevented them from getting to edible size--one of my books states that "cole vegetables are adapted to cool weather, growing best when temperatures are between 65 and 80 degrees F." Maybe they'll pick up when it begins to cool off more during the day?

The four cabbage plants I ended up planting outside in the garden have hundreds of holes and what I think is also a bunch of cabbage worm poop (see pics). I'm sure the worms are having a heyday burrowing into the cabbage heads.