Garden in August, Eastern NC, Zone 7b

August 5, 2015

Beginning of JulyBeginning of AugustWalking through the garden, to the left you will see I have my future fall garden covered. I do not start seeds indoors (no money/space) so to start my fall garden, I sow seeds in a shady spot and use a shade cloth. Last year was my first year trying it and it worked pretty well. I am sowing brassicas every two weeks and covering them as they sprout.

I also just started sowing carrots. My fall carrots last year did not do well. There was spotty germination (I assume because of the heat) and then whatever did sprout was eaten down. I do not know what ate them but it was suggested to me to combat whatever bug it was with DE. I noticed some of the first sprouts coming through so I went ahead and sprinkled DE over the rows of carrots.(This area is shaded on the west with tomato plants and on the east with sunflowers. Maybe that will help with the heat and germination rates.)

To the right, you see our sunflowers are looking great 🙂 They are starting to droop so I am expecting to be able to harvest them in a couple of weeks. We will give them to the chickens while they are moulting for extra protein and then dry some in the basement to give to the chickens throughout the winter.Though I tied up the tomatoes about a month or more ago, they have grown more and need to be tied up again. It is on my to-do list for this week. They are doing really well though! We harvest buckets daily. If we could get all of the critters out of the garden, we would be harvesting even more! The plants are doing great 🙂I must say, I have not found the best way to grow tomatoes. Last year we tied them to cattle panel. It did okay. This year, I thought it would be a good idea for them to climb up this repurposed chicken tractor. However, the tomatoes that grow next to the netting tend to rot b/c the black netting is so hot….still brainstorming for the perfect (for us) way to tie up tomato plants.

Next up, the melons. The ones that are caged are doing well. The ones that are not are…well…not. We have harvested about 3 cantaloupe so far and I am thinking we will be harvesting some watermelon this week 🙂We are still getting a trickling of strawberries and our raspberries that have grown taller than a groundhog can reach are starting to really produce for us! Look in the picture below. The raspberry plants within the strings are ones I planted. ALL the greenery around that? Yeah, those are raspberry shoots. I am going to rip all of those up this fall and transplant them. If anyone local would like some free raspberry plants, please let me know! We have about 5 different sections where we are harvesting green and purple beans. Section 6 is growing larger and the last section of green beans was just planted.(section 6 of green beans)

What’s left of our potato patch (what hasn’t been harvested) is doing well…And at the end of the garden is the sweet potato patch. It is looking healthy and is spreading as it should 🙂Spread throughout the garden is a variety of flowers, some planted from seed, some gifted to us. That is our garden in a nutshell 🙂 If you notice, we are in August and not a weed in sight! I could NEVER say that when I gardened the traditional way! LOVE Back to Eden gardening!!!

Oops! Let me not forget about the chickens 🙂 They gave us as many eggs in July as in June (a little less than 200). Our chicks are all getting big but their combs are not yet red. It would be nice if their first eggs lined up with the older chickens moulting. We’ll see. We have a broody hen who is set to hatch her chicks next week. I do not think we’ll let another one go broody after that because we are going on vacation at the beginning of September. If we can keep these chicks from being eaten (that has happened to about half of our chicks this year 😦 ), we will have 17 chicks. Which means we will have doubled our flock. Oh, that would be WONDERFUL! But we’ll see. Since we hatched them out, we don’t even know how many roos and pullets we have.

So What’s On Tap for August?

We will harvest the sunflower and potato patch fully. We will also pull up all of the dried beans. We will continue to harvest cucumbers, melons, beans, tomatoes, raspberries, strawberries, and squash. Mainly though, we will be preparing for the fall garden. This means lots of planting and (whenever I get more energy) a lot of compost-spreading!

The fall crops I am planting this month:

• cabbages
• broccoli
• beets
• carrots
• kale
• lettuce
• spinach

I will also plant seeds to go under a tunnel for winter harvesting:

• cabbages
• broccoli
• purple and green sprouting broccoli
• carrots
• beets

What does your garden look like at the beginning of August? What are you planting for your fall garden?

I am linking up with Green Thumb Thursdays today.

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