Garden Update: Summer Lull and Garlic

The garden is going strong, but we are in the summer lull. There is still plenty of work to do, but not much is ripe yet and the spring veggies, like peas are finished. It won't be long, though. The tomato plants are loaded down and the bean plants are full of blooms and tiny little beans. We have lots of flowers, too, although not as many as planned. We've been battling groundhogs again and they took it out on our cosmos, mowing down about 40 plants. Fortunately, we have several kinds of flowers that they don't seem to like.

Purple coneflowers.

The "Radio" variety of Calendula. I picked these seeds up at the Missouri State Fair last year. The variety was developed in the 1930s.

 A few marigolds that I grew from seed.

Flowers on the Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans. We planted several different kinds of beans this year and they all have different flowers.

The first of our zucchini. It won't be long before we get to have zucchini bread again.

The first of our green beans. These are Blue Lake Bush beans.

 Cherry Tomatoes. These are Sun Golds.

A pickling cucumber flower.

This isn't a great picture, but Michael built a tower for our cucumbers to climb. It is about seven feet high.

We planted a lot of garlic last fall. It is ridiculously easy to grow. Put in the ground in the fall, cover with some straw, remove the straw in the spring, and do a little weeding. In late June, dig it all up.

This is a terrible photo because I had to use the flash in the garage, but it gets the idea across: This is all of the garlic drying in the garage. We are going to try to save back some of the best heads to plant this fall. Unfortunately, I didn't keep notes about which variety I planted where, so I don't know what they are.