August toggles between Win Some, Lose Some. It’s when most gardens start to look like hell. Hot weather sends plants into stress, bolting to seed, wilting, and drying up (or drowning in places with way too much rain right now). We do our best to keep things looking nice, but nature always wins in the end. Here’s some inspiration to keep you going until fall planting time (which for us isn’t until late October/early November in SoCal). Let’s start with…
Lose Some
Despite setting traps for gophers, they’re still winning at the community garden. We’re just not planting right now.We’re squishing bagrada bugs with bare hands. That’s how jaded we are now. Little buggers.Most of our butternut squash has been hollowed out by critters. But these remain. Let’s see if they make it to the finish line. Oops – we might have waited too long to harvest this Icicle eggplant from AAS Winners. We’ll see how it tastes at that size.We had mixed results from our tomatoes this year. An abundance of cherries, but lackluster performance from everything else. Win some, lose some.
Win Some
Rutgers Devotion basil held up strong against downy mildew this year. Win some!This Chili Pie Pepper is another AAS Winner we’re testing out this season. It’s just turning color. Not sure how hot it’s supposed to be. Only one way to find out!After 3 years, and well after all our friend’s plants have fruited, our dragon fruit cutting is finally flowering. We’ll hand-pollinate at night once it opens. First time growing cayenne peppers. We’ll dry these in the solar food dryer and grind it into powder later this summer. We left our spaghetti squash (and 1 Delicata) out in the sun for a few days to cure before bringing them in for storage. This crop was a total success this year.
Don’t let a few setbacks deter you from gardening. We win some, we lose some. That’s the way it is. Take good notes, try again next year. It will be different, probably better.
