Garden Update

Since I last blogged about the garden, it has grown a ton thanks to all the rain we've had in the last month.

Garden 4.0

How about a tour around our 2013 garden?

This is Why I'm Hot

No, actually, this is why I'm hot.  In case you don't click through to the link, the title of the article is, "Heat wave:  1,000+ records fall in US in a week."  Just like the rest of the country, we've had record-breaking temperatures in Georgia the past week.  I'm usually one of those people that says, "You live in Georgia.  It's the summer.  Get over it."  But it has been hot as Hades the last week. 

As hot as it's been, we've been enjoying the summer from inside in the beautiful air conditioning (although that went away shortly this weekend when our power went out for a few hours).  One of the things we've enjoyed the most are some beautiful summer veggies.

Sadly, the only thing in this picture that's ours are the zucchini.  The yellow squash and Vidalia onion hail from Farm Publix, but the jalapenos and eggplants came from a local farm (my former boss who now has goats and donkeys and a huge farm!).  We whipped up some stuffed eggplants, squash/onion skillet (olive oil, onions, squash and zucchini, with a little fresh basil on top), and pan-fried jalapenos.  Trust me on the jalapenos.  The spice cooks out of them so they turn out to be crunchy goodness.  Olive oil, thinly sliced jalapenos (seeds removed), and if you get a spicy one, someone else in the group has to buy you a beer.  Sounds like a great deal to me.

What are your plans for the 4th tomorrow?  Any fireworks, fresh veggies, air conditioning or otherwise?

Pumpkin Party

Our mystery squash turned a suspicious color over the weekend:

It looks like our pumpkin carving this fall will be courtesy of our compost!

Garden 3.0

I feel like I have still yet to make up for my terrible blogging habits over the last few months (an overflow of posts and then... nothing).  Case in point:  It's 11 days into June, and I have yet to let out a peep about our summer garden that we planted two months ago.  Well, I'm making up for it now!

Here's a layout of our garden this year. 

Last week I counted 23 tomato plants, 5 mystery squash fruits, and 20 tomatoes waiting to ripen.  Mmmm!  See the bottom of the post for a picture of our mystery squash.

Another Window...

I thought it would be fitting on Friday the 13th to post about our latest window mishap.  You already know about our sliding door and the broken French door window insert, and now we can add to that list a car window.  That's right.  One single piece of pea gravel shot a single hole through the driver's side window of one of our cars.  Cue the shatter sound effect.

Falling for Fall

We've been enjoying in Georgia what seems like a much longer fall season than normal.  The temperatures have been a pretty steady 60 during the day with chillier temps at night (we had our first frost last week), and every day for the past few weeks has been absolutely beautiful.  I'm not sure what the difference is, but our fall leaves have been even brighter and lasted even longer this year than in recent memory.  Mr. Great Indoors and I had a chance to walk around a local park at lunch this week to admire all the fall foliage.  Beautiful.

Trying out some settings on my camera phone:

Our Fall Garden... or Lack Thereof

Our garden this summer was awesome.  It produced as much as we could eat on a weekly basis, but no more (unlike the okra in our garden the first year... literally coming out of our ears for weeks).  We finally had yellow zucchini and squash, which didn't come up at all in our first year of gardening.  Our compost experiment seemed to work out for the better, with all of our plants responding quicker and with more fruit than last year.  Like I said:  awesome.

What's the story, Morning Glory?

The weather has cooled down a little in the past few weeks, especially during the evenings.  By a little, I mean we're out of the 90s and into the upper 80s during the day-- but the evening temperatures have gone from the 80s to the 50s.  And with those cooler temperatures, our morning glory has come out in full force.  It's been so beautiful to see.

Here's a reminder about how Ms. Morning Glory started out.  We wanted something to cover up our brand new pergola, so we chose the medium-growth Ipomoea tricolor 'Heavenly Blue.' 

Natural Lawn Mowers

The place where I work has been trying to go green, constructing new buildings that meet LEED standards, using green cleaning products, and upping their recycling efforts.  In addition to these things, they also introduced a small sheep herd to take care of an invasive plant species along a potential Greenway extension.  Thirty sheep and two donkeys are unleashed every few months to eat away at the Chinese privet that has grown up in a particular spot. The donkeys especially are precious and friendly; they stand very patiently to be petted (pet?), but the sheep usually keep their distance and are hard to get good photos of.  (Yes, that sign does say "electric fence," but I still stuck my arms over to pet the donkeys.  Dare devil, I know.)

Fall Garden and Garden Journaling

The summer garden was starting to look pretty bad-- we ripped out the squash a few weeks ago, then took out the corn and cukes this weekend.  It was definitely a little naked (although our tomatoes and basil are going strong!).  So  Mr. Great Indoors and I paid a visit to Lowe's to pick out our fall garden.  Last year we didn't plan ahead quite enough to make this happen, but I read a few weeks ago (in Better Homes and Gardens, maybe?) that July/August is the time to start thinking about fall crops. Let me tell you, it's hard to think about anything fall-related when we've been having 100° plus temperatures every day for weeks.

How Our Garden Grows

Heading into our second year of gardening, Mr. GI and I have been talking about some lessons we learned after our first year.

• Don't sow eight okra plants unless you have LOTS of friends and families who reeaaaalllllly love okra.
• Happy bees = happy squash. Our poor squash only put out a few tiny little fruit last year. It turns out that there's a short window each morning when the female flowers can be pollinated by male flowers, and if you don't have happy bees around to do that pollinating each morning, you don't end up with any squash! This year we're giving it another go, but planting some flowers close by to see if that attracts some bees. The last resort is to try hand pollinating.  We also ended up with powdery mildew last year-- more about that in a bit.
• Mulch! Last year we only mulched around each plant to help with weed control and water retention, but this time around we're also mulching the aisles to clean up the whole look.
• Planting radish in the summer. Radish is definitely a cool weather plant, and if planted in the hot summer it will peace out. Last year we didn't do very well about planning a fall/winter garden, but I'm definitely wanting some carrots, lettuce, and other cool weather goodies.
• Our tomatoes last year went crazy. We got the plants from my sister, who threw a tomato in her backyard and ended up with plenty of volunteer seedlings to share. We sowed the plants underneath our clothesline so it would be easy to stake them up, and it worked pretty well last time.  So far we've had at least three volunteer plants from last year's tomatoes.  Looking forward to some tomato sandwiches again this summer!