A Big Tomato Harvest after a Wet August

Fresh Harvest of Cherry Tomatoes

We had a lot of rain in the last 30 days. 8-10 inches in fact. My gardening friend quoted "17 inches in 16 days" so results vary. The good or the bad part of it, depending on your perspective, is most of the rain would fall overnight. There was no progress made on indoor projects. I remained outdoors mucking around wet grass and picking over-plump tomatoes.

Eggplant with Garlic Sauce

Vegetables

Tomatoes were splitting with the excessive rain, but mostly edible. I harvested a nice bunch of eggplant to make my eggplant with garlic side dish. The eggplants are small, about 6 inches long, but I'm happy to have them. It looks like another group will be ready for a September harvest.

Tomato Harvest

Tomato and Eggplant Garden

Tomato Plants

The jalapeños are plentiful. My summer's first serving of jalapeno poppers were so intensely hot, however, it scared us away from one of our favorite dishes.

Pests

Hornworm Eating Green Tomato

There was an uptick in hornworm and other caterpillar activity on the tomatoes. This is a challenging game of trying to spot the very well-camouflaged worm on the plant. Clues are a stripped stem or a chewed green tomato (see photo) or waste material on leaves.

False Dragonhead Flower

Flowers in bloom

The late summer flowers are starting to bloom now. A couple of days ago, the first False Dragonhead bloomed. When several of these bloom together, the color impact of the purple is amazing.

Crape Myrtle Tree in Bloom

The flowers on the Crape Myrtle tree are a deep pink or fuchsia color. The tree has been allowed to grow tall so that the blooms are at the second story windows. Cleomes have finished blooming and I've collected seeds.

American Beautyberry

The American Beautyberry is known more for its purple berries than flowers. The green berries are starting to change to a dramatic purple.

Coming Up Everywhere

Wind and birds have reseeded several plants across the yard.  Lemon Balm, Crape Myrtle, and American Beautyberry plants are popping up everywhere.

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I hope you are having a great August! You can find rainfall totals for U.S. locations here.

August 2016 State of the Garden

Lantana Blooms

Vegetable Garden Remnants

In my North Carolina vegetable garden, August is a month of cleaning up dead plants and cutting back weeds plus fighting bugs so the few remaining plants can survive.

Hornworm with Parasitic Eggs Attached

Tobacco Hornworm

Another Hornworm!

Vegetables

Squash production slowed to a crawl and plants died off two at a time. Tomatoes ripened so slowly that worms and stink bugs enjoyed them before I could. Hornworms appeared on the Green Pepper plants on a regular basis. Left unchecked, these voracious eaters will completely defoliate a plant. I always spotted the waste material before spotting the well-camouflaged caterpillars.

Spaghetti Squash

I harvested a spaghetti squash gourd in late July. Growing from seed to harvest took about 90 days. Two other gourds had to be pulled since the vines were dried up and weakened by Squash Vine Borers. Regular squash grows rapidly but spaghetti squash takes much longer. The challenge is that the vines have to stay healthy weeks longer to grow the spaghetti gourds.

Sunflower

Flowers

I can't say enough about the beautiful sunflowers. they continue to amaze. I grew them in circles hoping large stalks would fall towards each other for support. That didn't happen. The circles filled up with tall grass and weeds. Next year I'll go back to single rows.

Mexican Petunia

A new addition to my perennial flowers is a Mexican Petunia. I brought a plant back from Georgia last Thanksgiving. I babied it in a Mason jar over the winter and planted it in late Spring. It was slow to flower, but was worth the wait.

Rain has been sparse for the last 2 weeks and that has given me a breather from grass cutting. With regular rains, this month has required lots of mower time.

How's your August/ September garden doing? I would love to hear about it. I'm already planning next year's vegetable garden with severe cuts in the number of plants. What about you?


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