Cleaning Out the Big Garden

Cherry tomato – Matt’s Wild Cherry, a wild and late blight resistant variety

If the above tomato is any indication, this is what the Big garden looked like. This tomato has been hacked back to ¼ size twice this year, and it’s gone crazy yet again.

Once we’d gotten the perimeter done, we set to the inside. A LOT of things had succumbed to so much rain and heat: artichokes, celery, parsley, hollyhocks, beets, and broccoli. Some had been pulled out, but most were still there.

The carrots in the 1st 3 rows from the left never did come up, despite being replanted twice. All that was there was weeds and calendula. The 4th row was basil, long since done and taken out. Next row was parsley, nearly 19’ long and you can see there’s about 4’ still alive. Swiss chard in row 6 had some sort of blight. I’d cleaned off the worst leaves in hopes with cooler weather it might recover.

In the back, the sunflowers are doing very well and the comfrey has hung in there. The comfrey is nowhere as tall or lush as past years, the understory rotting from rain.

The rhubarb did ok, not too much rot and still strong leaves. The Jerusalem artichokes did really well. We kept the raw milk treatment up and not a sign of powdery mildew.

Zinnias ADORED the weather and have done very well. That’s statice on its lower right. It has not done much this summer.

The comfrey far right, some volunteer mustards/greens, a solitary leek with the row of leeks back left.

The ornamental gourds did VERY well. Seems the squash borers don’t like them. They grew out of the garden and headed for the pasture. I put them up on the fence when I cleaned out the perimeter.

I’d left the cleome volunteers, as I do every year. And every year I forget how big they get and that they have big thorns. They’ve taken over the lima beans and the tomatoes. The gourds had grown all over the lima beans and into the tomatoes too.

Even with all the help from the cleome and gourds, the slicing tomatoes have started to ripen. I did keep them suckered early on, but they got away from me in late summer.

The mesclun/greens bed was overrun by the nasturtiums. Most of the greens had bolted in the heat, but I left them because the chickens like them anyways.

The next series is the cleaned out garden, until the frost takes what’s left.

Cleaned out – west side

Cleaned out – east side

There’s a few Walla onions in here, greens, leeks, and the lima beans.

Cleaned out – looking southeast

Cleaned out – looking southeast from the west side

The kale all was decimated by the zebra caterpillar. I’ve never had them before, and they went through the brassicas like Grant’s Army!

Cleaned out – looking east from the north side, comfrey, nasturtiums, marigolds on right

Cleaned out – looking southwest

Cleaned out – looking northwest from the side

Cleaned out – the tomato corner, looking northwest

Cleaned out – the south side, looking northwest

The peppers never did much even though they had the best spot in any garden. The paprikas have done ok.

Cleaned out – the mesclun corner looking northeast

So that’s how this garden looks at the end of September.

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