Beyond the Bake with Fanny

 Welcome back to the garden and happy September! How are things growing for you this month? I am getting tomatoes (finally), but no where near the number of tomatoes I would normally have. Cucumbers and beans are still producing, but the cucumbers are definitely ready to be done. More on harvests in a different post. Today I want to focus on the "beasts" often found in the garden. Sometimes it is hard to deal with the fauna among the flora. September ushered in a considerable amount of mosquitoes making it hard to spend a long time in the garden. Mosquitoes seem to love me a lot and I have not found a way to keep them at bay that is non-toxic yet. I will happily take suggestions on ways to keep from getting bit so much. One afternoon while I was digging up potatoes, I saw a squirrel take off running across the yard. Coming up behind the squirrel was a rabbit. I wish I was quick enough to get a picture of this chase, but I wasn't. I think the squirrel was too close to the ...

Welcome back to the garden friends. What are you harvesting? This growing season has been filled with challenges, lessons, and a ton of produce.  Just when I think I can't wait any longer to harvest, I end up getting a bounty of vegetables and herbs! I have picked beans nearly every day of the month. Harvesting this often creates a cycle of more beans growing. The more I pick, the more the plants produce so they can set seed for future plants. In previous seasons, I've harvested cucumbers in early July. This year took a little longer, the first harvest was about 3/4 of the way through the month. Once I started picking though, I have been able to harvest at least once a week. Cucumbers are not as prolific as the beans, but they need to be checked on every day. In the picture below, I found this monster (pickling) cucumber that I'm pretty sure was not on the vine two days ago, and if it was it was pretty small. This cucumber measured 6-1/2 inches in length and weighed 14 ounc...

Welcome back to the garden, friends. What's growing well for you? In my ongoing July garden tour, we're heading to Right Side Beds 2 and 3, where I've been tending to everything from fiery jalapeños to cool cilantro and an unexpected surprise of beans. In bed 2 I planted jalapenos, cilantro, onions, and some flowers to keep our pollinator friends happy and help us achieve our harvest. I divided the plantings to have jalapenos on the outer edges for ease of harvesting. In the photo below, the cilantro towers over the jalapenos and onions. The photo below that is a closer image of jalapeno plants and you can see some jalapenos just growing. If you've ever grown cilantro, then you will know that it prefers cooler temperatures, typically up to 75 degrees. The cilantro was doing well, nice leaf production and height most of June until we had a spell of 90 degree days. These hot, sunny days caused the cilantro to start flowering. I tried to keep ahead of the flowers so I coul...

 Welcome back to the garden. How is your garden growing? Join me as we visit the other half of Right Side Bed 4 and the delicious abundance of pole beans. As I noted in my previous post  July in the Garden: Right Side Bed 4 — Cucumbers, Beans, and the Cattle Panel Trellis, I over planted cucumbers and beans to ensure I had good germination. The beans did not disappoint! The beans planted here are called Rattlesnake and Purple pole beans. I knew what purple beans looked like but, Rattlesnake was a variety I had not heard of, so I was intrigued. What were rattlesnake beans going to look like and did they taste like regular green beans? If I remember correctly, I planted one of each variety of bean in three separate holes and had 100 percent germination. Like the cucumbers, I did not thin the plants because I wanted maximum harvest. At the time of planting, I was thinking about square foot gardening. Square foot gardening is a method to maximize planting and harvest in small spa...

Welcome back to my garden adventures. I hope you're growing and thriving right alongside me. For this post I am skipping over Right Side Beds 2 and 3 to jump into the fun chaos of Right Side Bed 4. As I noted in the post Garden Notes: What's Growing On , I started my cucumbers in ground and protected them from spring pests (mainly slugs) and cooler temperatures with milk containers with the bottom cut off. If you have struggled with pests eating your seedlings before they get a chance to grow or cooler temps like I experienced this year, I highly recommend adapting a version of this protection. After three attempts last year getting cucumbers to grow bigger than the first set of leaves before being eaten, I decide to try covering them. Instead of rushing to the store to spend additional money, I looked to items I had on hand to see what I could do to protect the plants and enable them to grow and thrive. The milk cartons were perfect. With the bottom cut off, I was able to plac...

Welcome back to the garden. I'm in growing zone 5b for southern Wisconsin, which hopefully helps you on your own gardening journey. As you might remember from my June notes (Garden notes: what's growing on), I included a picture of my garden layout; I'm sharing it again below for reference.  Let's jump into some July updates and see what's improved and where I am still having issues. Since I spend a fair amount of time in the garden, I was able to take notes based on the mental picture I have of the layout and what is planted where. On the Right Side Bed 1 I planted two 'Early Girl' variety tomatoes. They are finally starting to take off. We have had a decent amount of rain this year which has both helped and hindered the garden. Too little water means I have to go out and water everything; too much water and I worry about root rot or blight from wet leaves. The tomato plant that is on the most southwest corner of the garden space is the most prolific in ter...