August Gardens

It's been a beautiful summer full of colors, textures, and delicious growth.

Late August Veggie Harvest

Carrots, cucubmers, beets, and zucchini

Eat Your Fruits & Vegetables

Pole beans, Sungold tomatoes, Sunshine blueberries, and Golden raspberries

Pear Harvest!

Three young pear trees with a delightful variety of fruits: Rescue, Orcas, Conference, Red Bartlett

Stargazer Lilies

Kitchen Garden Beauty

Summer cabbage with nasturtiums, lettuce, and radishes

Flowering bronze fennel

Hot Enough for Tomatoes!

Tomatoes nestled behind the Black-eyed Susans

'Giant' tomoatoes -- a good crop this year

Lemon Cucumbers

Adorable lemon cucumbers

Lemon cucumber bamboo trellises

Blueberries!

A great year for Sunshine blueberries!

An Amazing Year for Hollywood Plums!

First of the Hollywood plums

The tree was loaded with plums this year!

August Flowers in Bloom

Phlox

 

Casa Blanca lilies

Helianthus 'Lemon Queen': perennial sunflowers

Black Eyed Susans

Perennial sunflowers

The bees love the perennial sunflowers

Stargazer lilies

Monch asters

Early August Vegetables

Pole beans!

Carrots, beans, cucumber,  and Sungold tomatoes

Lots of cucumbers this year: Marketmore and Lemon cukes

40 Plums and a Peach

Today's harvest: 40 Hollywood plums and 1 Frost peach!

The Hollywood plum tree is full to overflowing this year with many delicious plums.  They've been ripening for the past couple weeks.  We've eaten several and have given away some to friends and neighbors already.  Today I harvested forty of them to slice and dehydrate for some nicely sweet-tart snacks for enjoying later in the season.  There are still lots more to harvest over the next few weeks.

We have about two dozen peaches on the Frost peach tree this year, the first year it's started bearing fruit.  They are very gradually ripening one by one, and each day one of them drops for us to gather and savor as a delicious offering from the peach gods.  A single sun-warmed and ripened peach is an amazingly delectable delight!

First Cucumber!

The first cucumber of the season!  It was slow to warm up this summer, but we now have a few cucumber plants that are finally producing.  Let's hope for a sunny September!

Plentiful Peaches

Breadseed Poppy Harvest

I harvested a few of the breadseed poppies that have dried on their stalks.  It's amazing how many little seeds are in just one pod. 

One pod, one handful of edible poppy seeds!

Carrots and Leeks!

Crocosmia 'Lucifer'

The crocosmia is in full bloom this week!

Peaches and Plums

The Frost peaches are starting to ripen!

The Hollywood plum tree is loaded with plums this year.

Carrots and Radishes

Tonda di Parigi carrots along with Sora and French breakfast radishes

While tending the garden this week, I pulled one perfectly rounded Sora radish along with a few elongated French breakfast radishes.  Then I pulled a few carrots in another bed where they needed to be thinned.  I had forgotten about planting these rounded 19th-century Parisian heirloom carrots and was delighted at how charming they all looked together.  They made for a nice afternoon snack!