Midsummer heat...

I can't believe how fast this past month has flown... It's almost the end of July, and our first season of the CSA is coming to an end in another week. I feel like we had a fairly successful season, with more variety than I've been able to provide in previous years. It takes a while to figure it all out, you know, and there is always room for improvement. And of course, there is the weather to be taken into account...

Salad greens were short lived this spring, while carrots and beets grew beautifully.

RIght now it's the time for cucumbers - I like to trellis them up on like that:

The sunflowers, planted by first graders, have grown so tall! 

Harvested some gigantic one-clove garlic this year! I wish I could dedicate a big plot to garlic only - it's so rewarding to pull them out in June - and use them all year round!

I managed to make a few jars of pickles with some leftover cukes and garlic from the CSA. Dill seed came from the garden as well.

Potatoes did quite well this year - and hoping for even better crop next year, when the soil is better prepared. In my experience it takes about 3-4 years to get a garden established and the soil worked to a good consistency. For instance - we're having a lot of pesky blossom end rot on the tomatoes this year, because they are in the new garden, and we didn't add any lime (which needs to go in the ground months before planting). So now I've had to attempt to fix this problem with watering with epsom salt- and Tums  solution, and will be also watering with compost tea later today. The tomatoes always seem to get a second wind here in September, and I'm hoping the plants will be recovered by then, and reward us with some beautiful fruit.

But here are the pretty Red Pontiac potatoes.

The grape vine is full of fruit! It's trellis has been knocked over a few times unfortunately, and I've lost some fruit due to that. But maybe next week there will be a bit in your last shares...

And here are a few of the Gladiolas that miraculously came back this year! I thought surely I had lost them all last year, when they seemed to just rot off the bulb when we had a kind of a wet spell... I do need to do a better job at staking them up next year.

With these pretty blooms I bid you all farewell - I'm taking my family to the other side of the world for a month to visit my folks and friends and get away from the NC heat! See you back in September!