Saturday in the garden - Critters got a couple cucumbers, still green tomatoes

The garden is looking like it’s had a long summer. It’s definitely on the downward spiral at least the raised beds (my pumpkin “patch” is doing awesome). The plants are starting to look a little lopsided and tired, I can’t blame them, they’ve been hard at work for the last couple months. It’s definitely not going to win any beauty awards these days but it’s still hanging in there.

Last week I told you I should be getting my fall garden planted this week. Ummm, yeah, but I didn’t. I just didn’t have the time or energy this week! I realize I’m running out of time to plant anything worthwhile, but I’ll still try and get to the store this week and maybe find some starters that will come around sooner, rather than later. We shall see how it goes – but either way, I refuse to feel garden guilt, right?

While pulling ripe cucumbers I found that someone has been enjoying them as much as we have. By the looks of the teeth marks it’s probably a bunny. We seem to have a lot in our neighborhood. We’ve had such a bumper crop of cucumbers I’m not losing any sleep over it. We’ll see if it continues and I’ll just be better about making sure cucumbers aren’t hanging around the back of the raised bed (against the fence). I should put a sign out there that points the bunnies in the direction of the zucchinis. 🙂

The tomatoes are still very green.

Even sharing with the critters and with my green tomatoes, I had a good week of harvesting this week! I finally got around to harvesting our lettuce, a bunch more green beans (when did those pop up?), some more basil, cucumbers, a FEW red tomatoes, leeks and one strawberry (hidden under the pumpkin plant so the birds (or kids) didn’t find it.

Later in the week I gathered these goodies. MORE ripe tomatoes. They don’t even make it into a recipe – eaten fresh usually by the kids.

We ate the green beans with bacon, sauted leeks and mushrooms. Sprinkled with parmesan cheese. It was our entree – no sides and I think next year I need to grow more beans and figure out a way to grow bacon.

If you’re just now joining my gardening journey, I’m learning as I go grow and sharing along the way:

• First I built the raised beds
• Then I added dirt
• Then I added plants
• and for fun, we created a DIY Worm Compost Bin

The garden is part of our quest to be more self-sufficient this year. We also recently got chickens! See our chicken journey here.

How’s your garden doing?