Back into the Garden

As you might have guessed, the mess in my backyard has really gotten me down and driven me out of my garden. Top that off with the hot weather that kept all my plants from producing fruits, and I was very discouraged. But, thankfully, my new roommie talked it over with her dad (a farmer) and took another look before I gave up the whole thing. And, although my squash and cukes got a fungus of some sort, some of my plants have finally started producing. I've got some green tomatoes (baby and big varieties), cukes, okra, and sweet peppers.

Here are the cukes I picked today:

With this new information and renewed enthusiasm, I started cleaning up the yard. I decided to no longer wait for my landlord to get the debris from the fallen trees out of the way. So, I cleared off the top half of the backyard and then went through and pulled out all the dying plants in the garden (lettuce, squash, peas). I also cleaned up the cukes so they take over less area and tidied up around everything else:

I have plenty of new seeds for fall and also some seedlings (Brussels sprouts and cauliflower below). This weekend I intend on finishing up much of the backyard cleanup and planting all the new seeds and seedlings. We will be focusing on greens but also have a whole lot of good stuff (kale, spinach, mesclun, radishes, kohlrabi, speghetti sqaush, lettuce, arugula, collards, and some flowers).

I'm thinking the fall crop is going to be a much bigger success than the summer. We'll see if mother nature plays along.