The Jungle Rhythm!

Our corn patch

Well once again the summer humid heat has taken hold over our crops (and weeds) this year in the garden! While thriving it does look a bit jungle like and has definitely gotten a little neglected the past few weeks, but we are catching up. The last couple of days we have taken the time to heavily weed the tomato and pepper patch, due to the overgrowth of the weeds, our plants were hidden and we did lose some produce due to it. We got some clips ordered and we will be adding more stakes to help hold our beefy tomato plants up off the ground and not just clipped to one stake per plant. We will see how we like this method since it will be the first official year we have successfully done it this way. The tomatoes are also starting to turn orange/red and we will be in the thick of harvesting before we are mentally prepared for.

The zucchini plants look like they finished producing and then grew a new zucchini plant on top and are full of blooms and new zucchini that are starting to be ready for harvest. Not sure if that is even possible, but that's what it looks like. So round 2 of zucchini harvest coming in, I lost count at how many we have gotten in the last month, but we have gotten several batches dehydrated for zucchini flour, 52-60 cups of shredded zucchini in baggies in the freezer to make baked goods with, and several baggies of chopped zucchini in the freezer for us to use when we can tomatoes to make our spaghetti sauce, salsa, pizza sauce, ketchup, etc.

We started getting some okra, but not enough to even make a meal, there are several blooms, so we should start getting more of those. Our broccoli plants look a little sad, we have some bugs eating through the leaves, but they are still working on growing heads of broccoli. The corn stalks and sunflowers are competing for who is going to be the tallest. Our vine crops have also completely covered our trellis and are prospering heavily. We even have a couple pumpkins that are turning orange!

Our trellis for vine crops

Our cabbage has burst our of its ball almost literally, they grew so fast that they split. It is growing faster than we have been able to use, we have donated some (some zucchini as well) and are looking for ways to preserve the cabbage into something we can utilize later. We would love to hear what recipes and preservation processes you have utilized (and not just for cabbage)!

Our sweet potatoes plants themselves look amazing, I am curious to see what type of harvest we get this year! Our regular potatoes look like they normally do at this stage in the year. I am curious to see if we will get the abundance of them like we did last year (about 300 pounds)! I am looking forward to posting about our journey from last year with out potatoes!

Until next time, always stay humble and kind!

-Dakota