Even though the tomatoes are just starting to ripen, we are beginning to think about fall in the garden! Here’s a before and after look at the garden this week. Can you tell what changed?

Before:

This is Tuesday before our regular work day.

After:

This is Thursday, after the work day. Can you tell what we did? We did harvest the potatoes last week, but this week we removed our spring planted beans because they were full of spider mites and pretty much done. We are planning to replant with different varieties next week for our fall bean crop. We also pulled the pole beans off the trellis, even though they had just started blooming. We will replant the same varieties and see if we get better results this fall.

At long last, the ‘Muir’ lettuce finally gave up in the heat of last week! We had been very impressed with the fact that it had not bolted nor gotten bitter yet. This variety should be a great option for us to grow in spring into summer. We will have to try it again another year to see if the results are the same. We will be replanting lettuces in the next few weeks.

As per usual, the cherry tomatoes are the earliest ripening and most prolific tomatoes in the garden. This year we have Sweet Million (red), Chocolate Cherry (purple), and Yellow Pear (yellow) growing in the tiered Accessible Garden beds.

One of the delights of growing a range of winter squashes – big, beautiful flowers and attractive leaves! These squash blossoms would be great to pick and stuff with cheese or other fillings.

When I was checking our squash stems for signs of vine borers the other day, I noticed this big guy hiding out under the vines. Do you see him?

The zucchini have quickly started producing now that the row cover is removed. I guess the row cover was both a successful and failure as an experiment. It definitely prevented the squash vine borers while it was on, but we didn’t get much squash until it was removed.

Have a great weekend!