The bare dirt in this photo is the north half of our bigger field. It had all of our early spring plants in it this year....broccoli, snap peas, lettuce, cabbages. It was supposed to be under a cover crop of buckwheat for the summer. Unfortunately, that seed was sown on May 21st and we didn't get measurable rain until late July. That makes is awfully hard for seed to germinate. As soon as the lower end of the field is clear, this whole field will be limed and put under a cover crop of clover and rye for the winter. In the background, a handful of cherry tomato plants still stand that were in the two rows of large tomatoes that the blister beetles took out in late-June. Those plants and that trellising will come out this weekend.
Just south of those tomatoes is where I had three rows of specialty eggplants. Between the weather, the flea beetles and the black blister beetles, these plants just never looked healthy this year. Eggplant is usually one of the last vegetables I am still selling in the fall, right up to frost. I pulled these plants on Monday to get the lower end of this field ready to lime and cover crop.
Moving further south, these are my pathetic looking sweet pepper plants that I stopped watering a couple of weeks ago after becoming discouraged by sunscald, disease and more blister beetles. They will come out in the next couple of days. The only thing more pathetic than these plants are the other half of my pepper plants...
that the deer stripped all foliage from the night before this encounter.
The one row of heirloom tomatoes that made it through the blister beetle blitz and held out through most of the summer came down two days ago. I had time and it just wasn't producing enough to justify keeping it in. Trellising will come down soon.
Now that I've shown some of the more dismal aspects of this summer's gardens, I'll try to take some pictures tonight of a few things we've got planted for the fall that still look good. (fingers crossed)
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