For instance… you can put in your city / state here and it will give you the dates when you should sprout/plant common garden vegetables based on your last frost date. Neat! I put in my town — and I should probably get moving this weekend with ramping up supplies. The early plants need to go in soon.  Growing plants from seeds really helps to instill a strong feeling of ownership over my ‘crops’.

Q: What is a pumpkin’s favorite sport?

WOOT WOOT!! We still had a pumpkin at the garden!

A: Squash!

 Hahaha… and of course, so appropriate, because look what else popped up again… one of the ones from last year must have escaped and the seeds crept into the ground.  We harvested two along the ground and will be cooking them for dinner soon.

ACORN SQUASH!

Also, how awesome is the weather in NJ the last two days? PERFECT “fall is coming” weather. Last two nights we were perfect for open window sleeping, and the AC finally got a break.

Q: Why did the gardener need a cork?

A:  His garden sprung a leek.

HAHAHA! Our leeks are just about ready to be pulled. I’m very much looking forward to trying those this year!

They are big enough to see, pick off and crush, so you just need to try to remove as many as you can as soon as the attack starts. Larvae look like spiny yellow globs and the adults look like orange lady bugs. When you squish them, they ooze yellow.

Look at this crazy damage! I’m going to try to plant one more batch of bush beans this upcoming weekend; not sure we’ll get another batch before the frost but we really don’t have anything to lose. Most of the Mexican Bean Beetles are now in adulthood, so the larvae shouldn’t be an issue now… right?

Mexican Bean Beetles on Bush Beans

Before shot… seemingly healthy pumpkin

After shot… dried pumpkin seeds

I guess we’ll try again next year!

“Busy as a bee” on a sunflower

Between the business trip to Germany, work, vacation to Vermont, (mini) vacation to Ocean City, NJ / Atlantic City, turning 30 (Holy crap! still not ready to accept it!) surrounded by my loved ones, cleaning the house,  actually tending to the garden/yard, and, finally, just enjoying the summer, I just didn’t get a chance to fire up the computer and sit down and write some posts.

I have (kind of surprisingly) been thinking a lot about what I really want out of the site, ideas for posts, etc. However, now I just need to start actually doing some of them — unfortunately, I have the problem in other areas of my life that I do too much thinking and not enough doing, too! (My sister made me get pinterest… and there are so many awesome ideas on there! More on that later.)

All in all, the garden has been quite productive, even though there have been quite a bit of challenges as well. Full disclosure: the sunflower above is not actually from our garden, it was from another plot in the community garden. Our sunflowers are actually doing phenomenal, but there wasn’t a good image of a bee on them.

Here is the veggie count to date:

Unfortunately, these are the final numbers for the squash and cukes. The squash had a good run (except for the golden squash, I really think we sprouted those way too early), and although the numbers aren’t super high on the others, we had a single squash (Greyzini) weigh in at 7lbs 4 oz, and the rest of them weren’t far behind in sizes. We really like our squash on the grill, so we let them grow quite large. I was really excited for a good year of cukes, picking 10 the first harvest! Then earlier last week, they just crapped out and the vine died in a matter of 48 hours (same thing happened with our garden neighbors – consensus is some sort of fungus got to them). At least we got a good bunch out of the 3 plants I had, and I have a few more that are holding on in the fridge I’ll eat this week.

As for the rest, we’ll just have to wait for more posts. I don’t want to overdo it the first time back in about a month!

What vegetable can tie your stomach in knots? 
String beans!

Haha! Happy August!

Anyway, so much has been going on in the garden (no thanks to me, thank Mother Nature!), so I needed to post. I showed a few weeks ago that our first sunflower was blooming. This one we had sprouted indoors, and I think came out a bit stunted in the terracotta pot while it waited to be transplanted, and now it is happily creating seeds (albeit stunted, too).

Once we got the rest of the garden cleaned up, I planted some seeds direct in the ground — and WHOA have they taken off! They are seriously living up to the “Mammoth” name and are like trees growing out of the ground. The “trunks” are about 2.5 inches in diameter, and are currently standing a little over 5′.  I have 3 regular “Mammoth” growing — which are the kind with edible seeds which we hope to harvest, and 3 “Evening Sun” that will be a deep red or orange. I’m planning on having a fabulous vase at some point in the early fall with the Evening Sun! I’m pretty sure next year we will just plant direct in the ground.