Garden report

We had a late garden this summer. Because of the intense drought, most of it has played out by now.

We are still getting some tomatoes and cucumbers, and the limas have started blooming again. We had a lot of cucumbers for about three weeks. I've dug up one hill of potatoes to see what is there, and they have a pretty good size despite the dry weather and the moles.

We have a steady supply now of okra, but we didn't plant enough to get a meal off a cutting, so we have to save them up for a while before we have it. We were able to pick a large mess of green beans the end of July and take a lot back to SC for folks to eat, but while we were on vacation, the deer took over, and the bean plants have suffered since. We've eaten two meals off the baby limas, and Amanda cooked a good size mess of black-eyed peas and was able to freeze 3/4 of it.

A beaver ate the cucumbers, some of the black-eyed peas, and green beans. The deer helped on the green beans. A mole dug down a row of lima beans. A coon got the corn. Crows ate the watermelons and four beautiful cantaloupes. They also pecked holes in a lot of tomatoes. Stink bugs killed and ate the squash plants.

So we've been great environmentalists this summer, feeding all the wildlife around us while we sweated out there hoeing so they could get up closer to the plants to eat more.