Le potager en fin juillet

On this last day of July I thought I'd show you the current state of the vegetable garden. Our weather has been pretty good through the month. These past few days, however, have been met with rather chilly mornings. But since the days warm up well, I'm not worried that it'll affect the garden.

The whole four-square vegetable garden in the back yard.

I love it when the garden looks this lush and begins producing. The only things we've harvested so far, apart from radishes and parsley, have been some chard, zucchini, and patty-pan squash. The tomatoes are coming along but are still a while away from getting ripe.

Aubergines have big leaves and purple stems. Peppers are behind them in this plot.

One of the four square plots is filled with mostly aubergine (eggplant) and chili peppers. The aubergine plants grow slowly, but now they're looking good and many have blossoms. The chili peppers are doing well and there is fruit on them now. That plot also has four tomato plants in it, and they're looking good, too. This year I grew a bunch of marigold plants from seed and they're sprinkled here and there among the tomato plants.

A tomato begins to ripen. Will it be red or yellow? I planted both kinds.

The big tomato plot has sixteen plants in it and one row of rhubarb. The rhubarb is perennial and I'm not good at getting that row weeded out while the rhubarb is producing in early spring. Consequently the rhubarb row is also weed row. But it doesn't look to bad as long as I keep the weeds from spreading into the tomato patch.

Summer squash doing its thing. Radish flowers are on the lower right.

Another plot is given over exclusively to summer squash. Two hills of zucchini and two hills of patty-pan. These plants get big and look great when they do. This year I planted about six sunflower seeds in the middle of the plot and they're just now starting to lift above the canopy formed by the squash plants. It should be pretty when they flower.

The corn "field" with sunflowers growing up along the back.

I also put in a row of taller sunflowers behind the corn plot. They are huge now and are growing their flower heads. The corn is putting out tassels which should mean that the ears are not far behind. The corn we grew as an experiment last year was very tasty, so I'm hoping for a good crop this year.

There is more to the garden that I haven't shown you. There's a strip of chard and even more tomatoes that spans the western end of the four squares. We also have a rather large potato patch out in the back corner of the yard. And basil and spring onions are growing in a cold frame that's set up closer to the house.

So that's about it for now. I'll do another garden post as we move into late summer and harvest time.