It's summer in the garden. That's a time when every plant is happily growing, adding leaves and fruits continuously. Since primary season has ended I've had time to plant. I now have an amazing variety of things in the ground, and many of them are doing quite well.

That yellow bucket is my weed bin. I figure I've done something after I've managed to fill it with weeds. Sometimes that's easy. The first time I went out weeding after my vacation trip back east I filled it in half an hour. Sometimes it takes hours. Filling it with Bermuda grass (crab grass) takes hours, especially if you spend the time you need to do to fill it with roots. If all you do is cut off the leaves the stuff will be back almost instantly.

     

These are most of the flowers I'm having good luck with. The Dahlia takes almost no work, just a bit of water every time I'm out watering. The rose thrives on much less water, but every now and then I need to deadhead them to keep the flowers coming. Now that I know how to do it that's no big deal. Just cut the flower off above a stem with five leaves on it. That motivates the plant to put out another bloom. One of the master gardeners told me that those pink flowers I'm growing are on a "Garden Party" rose bush. She finds that apropos.

There are a couple of other rose bushes, but right now they aren't in bloom. The white bloomed one had a ton of blooms on it. I told this woman down the way to help herself to as many blooms as she wanted and poof! No more rose blooms on that plant. I'm not complaining. The purple one only puts out one or two blooms at a time, and right now I'm waiting for another one. I don't know the names of either of those bushes.

I took out the other rose bush months ago. I just didn't like the flowers enough. I've been growing beans in that spot since.

The horseradish continues to thrive without any water at all.

     

My tomato bushes are doing great. I've been eating my fill of tomatoes all of August from these four plants. I had so many that I took a shopping bag of the things with me to the Green Party of Santa Clara County meeting and passed them out as "surplus inventory."

      

I also took that cucumber and that pepper. Andrew got the pepper. I think the guy in the lavender shirt I've never met before got the cucumber. I seem to get about one fruit a week from each of those plants.

The cucumber plants seem to be doing okay, but they seem to always want more water.

     

The collard greens continue to feed me a meals worth of greens a week or something like that. I really like how they just grow and grow, and don't seem to mind the grazing that I inflict on them. Delicious and nutritious to. Collard greens are a very sensible crop!

In fact, I like collards so much that I've just planted a couple of tree collard cuttings. Thank you Gene! Supposedly once they develop I'll get more than enough greens just from those two plants. I'm hoping they grow!

     

The beans are another thing that's doing well. The plants climb all over everything, show flowers for a few days and then go to work churning out bean pods. I've had a few green and they were quite delicious. I'm going to be planting them again for sure.

This is a picture of the Bermuda grass before I started my eradication campaign. Since this picture was taken I've been pulling a bucket of the stuff out every day.

     

The grapes are just starting to get sweet. I put bird cloth over the vines to protect them from birds. Hopefully I'll have a nice grape harvest in a few weeks or a month or something like that.

I had to cut a few branches that were climbing on the tomato cages to get good coverage with the bird cloth.

     

The eggplant was doing great until the birds discovered it. I went out there one day and every eggplant had peck marks on it. I decided that the time had come to harvest the stuff. Had it all in one meal. Tasted like eggplant.

I got two okras out of the the okra plant. Then some critter ate all of the leaves. Since then it's just been a healthy looking stalk in the garden. Grrr....

     

The pumpkin seems to be doing great! It seems like I under watered the plant or something like that, because a lot of the leaves have died. I'm not sure what caused that, but the master gardener said the plant is fine. Maybe it's just giving up because it's done making the pumpkin. She said those nodules on the flesh are called "sugar spots."

I have something like a dozen corn plants that seem to be doing okay. When I took this picture I thought that was the only ear I had in the garden, but I've since noticed many others. Now there is at least one ear on each of the corn plants. I'm wondering how to decide when to pick it.

  

I'm better at picking lettuce when it's ready to eat than I was the first time I planted it. Still haven't mastered getting them the right amount of water though.

     

These flowers aren't on my plot, they are near the gate. I just took the pictures of them because they are good looking. Enjoy!