Harvest Time with No Harvest

Welp, the garden wrapped itself up rather early this year...because everything died.

[sigh]

It started off SO promising!

We have some theories on watering and row cover and weed barrier and things that may have prevented good ground seepage. And then there's the fact that every melon and squash imaginable got a different kind of beetle eating them!!

Remember how excited I was at the beginning of August about our fabulous melon plants?!

Here's our melon bed by the end of August:


Yeaaaaaaah.
That's sad.

And remember that adorable little watermelon that had started to grow?!
Yeah; that's as big as it got.  😑

His vine died with him hanging there no bigger than in the photo I'd taken before.
I went out one day and found he had dropped and rolled away, so I "rescued" it and cut it open.
Tasted horrible, but it was so cute!!

The one my garden plot partner grew in her yard, however, was delicious!


The tomatoes actually did give us quite a good harvest; we just weren't great about getting out there fast enough. They split open very quickly or rotted away way faster than it seemed they should.

And as usual we had quite the jungle growing!

Huge tomatoes and medium tomatoes and grape tomatoes and roma tomatoes and asparagus and pumpkins, oh my!

The pumpkin vine wove itself through all of the plants, through the tomato cages (and by 'through', I mean in, not between), out the other side and started eyeing up the pepper bed next door before finally also succumbing to the beetles and leaf mold.

Not before producing some pumpkins, though!

One happily plopped itself right in the smack middle of a tomato cage!

[shaking     head]

Only our psycho garden!


The other one just lay peacefully in the mulch towards the end of the vine which means he actually ripened all the way and looks like a real pumpkin!!

So he got picked and put to very good use.
In fact, should he stay alive for a few more weeks, he will be put to the ultimate use for a pumpkin. Just have to figure out my design :-D

The tomatoes eventually all died out with such finality, you'd think we had been mistreating them. Sad dead vines with rotting tomatoes strewn in their wake. Alas.



The grape vine....good gracious that thing went crazy! And we had grapes!!

The raspberries also started producing again. What? It's August!














Also oddly, the peppers make a huge comeback! Like, actual peppers growing! A bunch! I picked a big, crunchy one and it was delicious!

The edge around our fence was in need of trimming / weeding so badly, but near our trash can was this vine and one day when I went out - behold! Beautiful white flowers!

I was so excited that I showed my partner a picture and she replied with a big groan. "They're morning glories! Get rid of them!"

Oops!

They grow a bit too intensely for our plot's taste, so alas; away they went.

So, aside from some random rogue things that have amounted to very little, I'm hoping some peppers grow well enough to eat and then our hope still lies in our peanuts and potatoes! 

Peanuts, potatoes and peppers!!!
(And garlic and carrots, of course. And the random bok choy that grew; I must have left the root there when I harvested it earlier!)

The garden wrapping up in mid-September: