September in a Big House, Tiny Garden

It's September, people. September!

August in my garden sure did not disappoint! Oh, there have been problems, sure, but these were minor compared to the war I had to wage on Japanese beetles last month, or the over abundance of cucumbers that were impossible to reach for harvest. I got a break from canning stuff for a couple weeks, the weather has been quite nice, and I've been producing all the vegetables, herbs, and a few fruits that I could possibly eat for a good month now.

Planting for a Fall Harvest

I put a second planting of beets, carrots, daikon, and arugula where the cucumbers had been. What a pleasure ripping those things out was. No more pickles!!! No more scratched up forearms or pokes in the eyes! Good riddance, I say!

I successfully grew daikon last fall, but my spring planting this year produced woody and inedible roots. Maybe planting daikon in the fall is the trick. We'll see.

_{Late July's cucumber jungle}

_{Late August's fall planting in the former cuke bed}

Nightshades Galore!

Last year, my garden did not produce a single pepper, nor a single eggplant. This year, I switched out the soil in my raised beds, spaced the plants much farther apart, and made sure they got plenty of sun, pruning the eggplants pretty heavily to get sun onto the blossoms. Even so, I'd begun to despair that this would be another barren year for those two fruits, when I spied these!

_{Rosita Eggplants}

_{Poblano Peppers}

Spuds, a first for me

I don't eat a lot of potatoes, because I haven't really liked them enough to prepare them. Until I grew my own, that is. It could just be that I LOVE to eat food I grew myself, but these babies are delicious, tossed with plenty of olive oil, salt and herbs, then roasted close together in the oven so they don't brown or dry out. I didn't get a whole lot out of the first bag I harvested, only seven pounds, and am hoping my second bag will produce more.

_{German Butterballs}

_{A typical summer meal these days, roasted potatoes and cortido, which is also made exclusively with stuff from my garden}

Zucchini Summer Stew

Zucchini has been going strong for a very long time now, and is only just starting to peter out. I've made some fabulous zucchini dishes. Below is one that was made from veggies and herbs that were 100% from my garden. That was a very good day.

Here's a little haiku I think most gardeners would appreciate:

zucchini proves
that invisibility
is a thing

_{The Ingredients}

_{The Yummy Dish}

Petunias

Last fall, my petunias got leggier and leggier until I finally threw them out in early September. A couple of weeks later, I went to visit a friend's garden, and she had the most incredible petunias, in full and glorious bloom. Her secret? Heavy pruning during late August. I tried her technique this year.

_{Before the big snip}

_{After the big snip}

Hopefully I'll have a shot of a glorious petunia to show you in next month's Garden Hive challenge.

As usual, there is a ton of stuff I haven't shown you. My rutabagas, a fall planting of onions and shallots, my fabulous black brandywine tomatoes, okra, raspberries and lettuce. More on those for next month's challenge.

Thanks so much for reading this one!!