Our Garden in July and August

It’s been a while since I posted new garden updates though I occasionally share few picture on my Facebook Page I haven’t had a chance to prepare a full picture rich blog post until today.

Garden is doing well.What can I tell you, it keeps us busy. Though it’s been a hot summer it also rains a lot so we don’t have to water our plants as much. We are still picking beans from the first crop and we planted the second crop, and we are expecting first string beans later in the month. We also planted new crop of peas and they are growing abundantly.

Peppers are amazing this year.
We are still enjoying fresh scallions.
At the end of July we pulled all the onions, dried them and now they are hanging in the bags in the storage shed. We’ll enjoy them till next year.

We picked first pepper at the beginning of July.

Basil and Parsley. I absolutely adore these two.

Peppers are still growing. Cucumbers are delicious in Creamy Garlic Dill Salad.

In July we also pulled all the carrots. You can read more about it here.

At the end of the July we pulled out all the onions. We grew over 1000 onions. Onions we grew aren’t really super, extremely big, I’d say they are medium to small. Perfect size for scrambled eggs or as a base for a simple sauce. We love onions. We grew yellow and red ones.

Did You know ONIONS are great remedies for:

Fresh Onion juice is an effective treatment for bee stings. Simply cut the onion in half and rub the cut part onto the affected area. It really works!
Onion juice mixed with some honey or sugar is a great natural remedy for dry cough.

Onions are left to dry on the garden racks.

We removed onions stems and filled nylon bags, we hanged the onion filled bags in the storage shed and left them there to dry them even more. They will last till the next season. Well that is the plan.

Squash Garden has taken over the garage roof. I mean literally.

One of my favorite tomatoes is : Tomato Juliet variety. These tomatoes are kind of like mini Roma. Sweet, juicy and meaty. Delicious for making Homemade Sun Dried Tomatoes, is salads and eating alone sprinkled with little kosher salt, drizzled with olive oil and dusted with some chopped basil. Delicious.

Peppers grew significantly during the month of July. They actually overgrew the stakes we made so we had to add additional supports. They are covered with crop and started to turn red at the end of July.

We also have a nice crop of cucumbers though I’m not canning much this year. I’ve canned lots of Dill Pickles last year and since I still have quite a few jars left we’ve decide to scale down on cucumbers this year.

We jumped into August so quickly, I can’t believe it is nearly middle of the month.

My Basil plants and cucumbers are still going strong.

Peppers still growing and more and more of them are turning red. I can’t wait to make my Red Pepper Paste.

Tomatoes are over 10ft tall. A really strong storm came through last week and “injured” one of the plants in the picture below on the right. Though we tried to save the plant, it looks like it is not going to make it.

1st Tomato Harvest this year took place in the beginning of August. Though it may seem a lot,

it is nothing compare to our previous years(check out these gorgeous Tomatoes from the previous years) but I will still make lots of Marinara Sauce, soup and other tomato delights. Just like with cucumbers we scaled down with tomatoes this year as well.

We also planted new crop of peas and they are growing fast, really fast.

We are growing Butternut Squash(harvest in September/October) and also Spaghetti Squash(harvesting now)

Squash garden is doing really well.

Our Temporary Garden Resident

For about 2 weeks in July we had a temporary tenant in our squash garden : Mr. Rabbit. He was so tiny, he was able to get in through the eyes on the fence but as he grew bigger from all the eating he(I’m assuming it is a male) can’t fit through the fence anymore. Don’t worry, Mr. Rabbit is still living in the area and we enjoy seeing him. He doesn’t get scared easily and is really really cute. We fed him a carrot and he seemed to enjoy it very much. Occasionally he’ll sleep under the car or nearby bushes and we see him pretty much every day. It wouldn’t be the same without him.