My garden is out of control. Huge behind-schedule work project + a handful of weekend getaways, and Adam has been busy with another project (you’ll find out about that soon enough). This is for posterity so I better be honest…

Here’s a view from standing on top of a chair, on the deck looking east. I love how the pumpkin and squash plants now totally dwarf the rainbarrel, the deck, the fence, and the potato tower.

Tomatoes are oh-so-close. We’ve eaten a handful of stupices and a few blondkopfchen — both are quite small and early. The blondkopfchen is the crazy one with the halo of blooms on top, on the left. After Aug. 1 I will probably start pinching off new blossoms, since there’s no point.

Lacinato kale, carrots, a cabbage in the back behind the overgrown chamomile. The kale came back beautifully from my earlier cabbage worm troubles.

Beets, turnips, celeriac, parsley, and such. It’s about time to do another beet & turnip harvest and thin these out more. Adam pulled one celeriac to see if it was ready and it most decidedly was not. It was just a mass of tiny roots, which makes me wonder whether the others will work out or not.

Variety peppers and cucumbers in the background (encroaching pumpkins/squash on the left). I need to start picking and pickling, really soon. We’ve eaten a few of each fresh.

Here’s another overview, to give you a good view of the bean trellises. In the middle is “Cherokee Trail of Tears” — a bean you can eat fresh or dried. I finally picked two tonight — my bush beans at my community garden plot have been producing beans for over two weeks.  I wasn’t aware that pole beans take so much longer. The Christmas Lima Beans, on the right trellis, have so far produced 0 pods. Plenty of blooms, though. I’m not giving up hope yet.

So did anything look different? Did things look maybe a little less crowded? That’s because we pulled out all the garlic about a week ago:

We dried it in the sun for about an hour then moved it into the garage to cure. It’s just about done, so this weekend we’ll clean it up further and move it inside and see how long we can make it last.

Our backyard prairie/native garden is also starting to take shape! We need one more stock tank (ahem, Dad), then we’ll fill in the areas around them with natives. We transplanted 4 milkweeds from a field near Adam’s parents’ house and less than 12 hours later we saw a very excited monarch butterfly in the back yard. That was fast!