In which the camera wanders around the farm to view the gardens

Oh, how far the garden has come since early days on the Farm!

The "old" aka original garden, est. 2009.  Sunflowers, squashes, potatoes, carrots.
The peas and radishes are done now, and those beds are getting run over by
enthusiastic squash vines.

The garden this year is a brag-able part of the landscape.  Our very warm, dry Spring has led to a hot dry Summer--unusual for the Swamp, and perfect for the vegetables.

The "new" garden, est. 2014:  beans, tomatoes and a few potatoes.
We are very fortunate to have a deep, productive well to keep everything watered.

The lack of snow pack in our mountains last winter was worrying to local farmers.  The lack of rain this spring has got some folks really frantic.  Our trails were closed last week during a very hot spell, but with a few spits of precipitation and some lower temps, things are open again.

Patty taught us that radish seed pods, aka the "rat tails," are delicious.
She pickles them.  I mostly eat them raw, right off the bush.

Still, we look at the sky every morning, hoping for rain.  So far, not much.

Bean blossoms.
We will be harvesting beans in a few days--our earliest harvest ever.

The gardens are putting all that heat and light to good use.

We may actually harvest tomatoes this year,
instead of our usual crop of black slime.

We leave room for serendipity in the vegetable patch.  If something "volunteers" and it isn't too much in the way, we plant around it and let it grow.

This volunteer squash plant sprouted in the carrot bed...
all the squashes on it  are yellow and green like this!

As always, we have a robust crop of pigweed, an obnoxiously sturdy weed that shoots up overnight.

Pigweed is good for something.  Who knew?

Monica discovered that our pigweed is actually edible (by people as well as by pigs):  it's a relative of spinach, and the leaves are good served steamed or raw in a green salad.  I was pleased to learn that pigweed is excellent poultry fodder as well.  Stay tuned for a poultry post, coming soon.



Zucchini isn't exactly a weed.

The Z Apocalypse is nigh

I only planted three zuke plants this year, but as usual, they are growing so enthusiastically that I'm hauling buckets of zucchini to work every week to distribute among my unsuspecting delightful library patrons.

Elsewhere

future pickles!

the cucumbers are tiny, but growing fast.  And the butternut squashes are way ahead of schedule,

Baby butternut squashes

which is good--we often have to harvest not-quite-ripe butternuts in late September, because they don't always get fully grown before the first frost.


It's almost time to stop weeding the old garden entirely (except for periodic harvests of pigweed for the birds) because soon

Honk!  Honk!  Make way!  Giant Pumpkins coming through!

 the Giant Pumpkins will run over everything in the garden...and part of the lawn.

Weeds will mostly die back once they are shaded by pumpkin leaves the size of truck tires, and it's hard to get into the garden without stepping on vines,

Another glorious evening in the garden

so some day soon I will give up pulling weeds (except as a treat for the birds), and just watch the whole thing explode like a bright green sun gone nova.

And that is Good.