I am a little embarrassed that we are this far along in August and I am only now posting my end of July garden pictures.  Between gardening, hosting guests, playing with the children, housework etc.  my poor blog has suffered. So without further adieu I give you…

The July Garden!!!

This is the small garden which will be our berry patch in the future.  Everything is doing well.  I think one of our biggest issues is that things have grown in to each other.

As our strawberry plants have sent out runners we have potted them so they would root down in the pot then we will transplant them to where we want them.  I look forward to a few years down the road when we are producing more than enough strawberries.

Our broccoli did great, this is Joshua holding two heads of broccoli.  We did do battle with the cabbage moth, I am not sure who won, the broccoli turned out great but we did end up with some caterpillars coming along for the ride.

We let the little heads go to flower as we saw an interesting video on getting a second crop of broccoli from the same plant in the fall.  I am also hoping to collect some seed.

Cauliflower turned out all right my problem was not processing them promptly and the chickens ended up eating more than we did.

Our grapes are coming along, these guys have a way to go as they will be purple by the time they are done, but they are growing well.

This lettuce bolted and I was letting him go to seed but the next day he had fallen over and the base was rotting, again the chickens enjoyed this one.

Our tomatoes are starting to ripen, already we have had more than previous years and if all my green tomatoes ripen we will have a bumper crop!

I am the first to say I am wrong… I did not think the corn would produce as it was a little late going in but it is doing really well and we may yet have corn on the cob from our garden.

The potatoes have done very well and it won’t be long before we harvest them all.  The plants in this picture were standing nice and tall but were beaten down by the rain.

This is the back half of the garden that has the potatoes and corn in it.  We are still laying down wood chips.  The plan is to use this as our main vegetable garden next year.  This has been the driest summer on record for quite some time around here, and our garden has been very successful with very little irrigation.  I truly believe the success lies in the method.  We have embraced the wood chip covering described in the movie, Back to Eden.  We have been busy preparing gardens for the future by laying down wood chips.  The previous owners of our home had extensive flower gardens, which since we moved in have largely gone to weed.  We are currently reclaiming these beds by pulling out plants, shrubs and weeds that have been left to run wild and are covering the beds with wood chips.  In time my plan is to replant these gardens with plants that not only offer aesthetics but also have a use, herbs, edible flowers, elderberry bushes etc.

Even Samuel is picking up a shovel to help.

It is great to see Joel out helping in the garden too, 2 years ago I would not have imagined this.  All of the children have helped out in different ways in the garden.

Our fruit trees have been a disappointment this year, no fruit on our plum and pear trees and the new apple trees (this is their second year with us) are only showing a few small apples.  Time to do more reading about fruit trees.

I didn’t share any pictures of our raspberry and blackberry bushes but they are establishing themselves nicely and I look forward to future berry seasons.

There is our quick run down of our July garden.  How have your summer gardens fared?

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