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

“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!

We decided to try growing both of them this year from the seeds, as you can see in the top right corner of the Garden Map. I planted and labeled each one in its own terracotta pot earlier this season, but failed to realize that the marker I used would fade in the sun. Now, both plants look exactly the same, and right now, we can’t tell them apart.

Today, we noticed one of them already has a baby pumpkin on it! Look how cute!

Of course, we don’t know which pumpkin it is! We are not sure if the elongated pumpkin was a different type of pumpkin or if it a ‘normal’ pumpkin and just grew that way because we let the vines climb the fence. I am hoping we will get to find out soon enough! (For the record, this year they should have enough room where they should not need to climb a fence)