Telling My Story: The Garden: Late August

Today I went to the garden for a quick minute to harvest a few things. Mom was taking care of g, so they both came out to the garden with me. g would not look at the camera. She's sassy, that little one.

I need to start ripping up the plants as they start to fade and die. I've read a lot about composting (as this is my first year) and everything says that the compost needs a full year to decompose. It also says that I need a variety of materials in the bin (greens and browns) in order to work well. So, I figure I may as well start with the stuff dying in the garden.

On the other hand, it's hard to see my garden die so quickly. I swear that I just planted it a few weeks ago. So much time goes into the planning/planting stage and then it blossoms, blooms, and harvests way too quickly. This year, in particular, seemed to move extra fast.

My acorn squash plants. Lots of green. Lots of vine. About a dozen squash.

The cantaloupe vines are dying on their feet but I'm not ready to rip them up just yet.

My cucumber plants were INCREDIBLE this year. Two years ago, I started growing cukes, but the vines quickly died when I went to Europe for 10 days and they went unwatered. Last year, the cukes never really survived and I don't know what went wrong. This year, however, was amazing! I'm still harvesting about 8 cucumbers A WEEK. I have already canned 10 QUARTS of pickles. TEN. Not to mention the countless that I ate raw or sold to friends.