After the atrocious heat and humidity, then last week's torrential rain, the garden is showing the strain:
--I pulled up the zucchini and squash last week (after harvesting and freezing enough for 14 batches of zucchini bread!). They were starting to show mildew, which let the beetles come in, but I got a good harvest.
--A couple of tomato plants will be next: the vines are dying off, and there are only a couple of green ones left on each plant. The red tomato still looks pretty good and is still producing, and the yellow cherry tomato continues to produce like crazy. For all the crazy weather, the tomatoes have wonderful flavor this year.
--The orange bell pepper plant turned out to be a long, banana-shaped pepper; I harvested a couple yesterday and gave them to Kid #1 with the warning that I don't know if they're hot or sweet. I also planted a red pepper that's shaped like a Scotch bonnet, but sweet instead of hot. We'll see! That one is just loaded with green peppers at the moment.
--The supposedly-bush cucumbers have spread into the neighboring bed. Some of the leaves are yellowing and/or frying in the heat, but they continue to produce pretty well.
--The lone volunteer cantaloupe vine has gone completely bonkers and is trailing all over between its raised bed and into the flower bed next to it. I picked four nice cantaloupes over the weekend, and a couple more will be ready this week.
All in all, for a very cool and wet spring that led to late planting, and then extreme heat for most of June and July--not to mention that I haven't been able to do much upkeep at all, post -op--things have done really well. I might try a couple of packs of late-season kale and lettuce, if I get the ambition.
OH--almost forgot: the herb bed is producing a metric shit-ton of parsley, sage, catnip, chives, rosemary, and dill! :-) I need to get a cheap dehydrator to replace the old one I used to have.
