some final harvest

And small. Pulled all the beets- they were small, and didn't taste good. Cleaned up my pots of carrots, pulled some- they look okay, if on the small side! Probably because I didn't water often enough, and there was whitefly and swallowtail caterpillars (which I moved to the rue or lovage plant when I found them).

Well, there are still yellow summer squash to eat, and collard greens. The chard is getting hit pretty hard by leafhoppers again. I think I'm going to cut it all to the ground and eat what grows back (now that it's cooler weather, should taste better). Tomatoes are a loss. Stink bugs and something else have spread disease among them. Still eating a bit of amaranth greens, and herbs from the deck containers though!

I've picked almost enough cowpeas as small pods to eat like green beans (enough for one serving). There's quite a few pods matured and dried to collect for good black-eyed peas. But I feel the same about this plant that I did last year- love how lush it grows, mostly untroubled by bugs. Disappointed that I get tons of vines and foliage, and it seems very few pods for all that growth!

things got eaten

By the bugs! My favorite, amaranth 'calaloo', I have totally been unable to keep ahead of the beetles by hand-picking them every morning like I used too. Every morning far more are riddled with so many holes and spoiled by frass, not usable. I've finally sprayed with insecticidal soap (second dose today) but don't know if the plants will recover enough to be worth picking from again. Half them got pulled and tossed already.

Here's the beet and turnip-rutabaga bed in the foreground- not much better shape. Most of the beet foliage ruined- I think from whitefly or leaf hoppers. 

Turnip-rutabagas are definitely getting damaged by whitefly. I've sprayed them, too. The roots are all still quite edible, though- but I miss not being able to use the greens, and I'm sure I'd have bigger, healthier beets and rutabagas without the damage.

My collards have also been swarming with whitefly, and harlequin bugs (took me a while to find those culprits). And all are getting munched by slugs too, I think.

All the actual turnips rotted. I had to empty most of that bed and throw them away. 

But the cowpeas on the other end of the bed are doing grand, I just hope they actually give me some beans to eat (planted out kinda late this year)

And in the next bed over, the yellow summer squash is amazing! I took this picture several weeks ago, it's now sprawled large enough I can't walk through the aisle between the beds. Getting one or two nice-sized squash per week out of there. Very little sign of disease, no bug damage I can see!

Swiss chard

and leaf-beet chard are faring okay. Some leaf hoppers spreading disease, but when I start to notice symptoms, I cut out what I can eat and cut the rest down to the ground, bundling most of insects away with all the anemic foliage to the trash. The chard grows back quickly if watered heavy again, gets kind of a fresh start for another week or so.

Tomatoes- eh. They don't look great. The cherry and purple cherokee tomatoes are discolored, the larger varieties small sized and lots of leaves look unhealthy. It didn't seem like aphids, probably some kind of virus causing wilt- I cut out a lot of sickly foliage again and redid the mulch.

Kind of a blah year, aside from the squash, and the herbs which mostly seem unbothered. I'm wondering if next year I should grow more new varieties of things (as the yellow squash and cowpeas have done so much better than zucchini and green beans for me), or just scrap the garden altogether and do a solarization to kill pathogens in the soil . . . 

one day's harvest

I've been lamnenting how poorly most of my garden is doing this year (due to some neglect) but really it isn't all that bad. My yellow summer squash is doing stupendous, I still have plenty of greens (even if not my favorites), and the beets are small but tasty.