Garden Update: Curcubits, Kale, Cosmos and Flowers Galore!

This has been the week of curcubits (pumpkins, cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumbers, zucchini and serpentine gourd):

The Fairy Tale Pumpkin is turning orange!

Concrete cantaloupe: oops! I didn’t see this guy until he’d already wedged himself firmly into the concrete. Some friends suggested we cut a sliver when ripe and then shimmy it out. Tomorrow’s fun project. (And yes, that is a perfectly captured fly on the gnome’s cheek. LOL, such photographic skill!)

One morning’s partial harvest. We have cantaloupes busting out all over the place. They’ve been eaten, given away, pickled, frozen, made into cinnamon-camu berry smoothies. All we can say is yum!

These serpentine gourds taste like a milder version of zucchini. Some have grown nearly 4 feet long! Just a couple shown here with kale for chocolate kale chips. I dried the gourds into savory chips while dehydrating the kale.

First ripe watermelon: a Russian variety called Small Shining Light. At first I thought it was just OK. Then I refrigerated it. OMG! Heaven! Also delicious blended with the rind into a refreshing smoothie.

This shows the back beds AFTER removing all the cantaloupe vines, which had acquired powdery mildew. The fruits were fine, and truthfully, we were running out of room for the vines anyway.

More post-cantaloupe raised beds. You can see fall starting to show a bit, and the cleared areas already have fall crops sown or await garlic planting in a few weeks.

I’ve been harvesting like crazy from the front yard cottage garden, but you can’t even tell.

The tree collards keep replenishing as soon as I harvest loads of leaves for dehydrating.

Another angle of the front beds. The nasturtiums, kale and sedum are loving the pre-autumnal weather.

So glad I planted multiple varieties of sunflowers. These autumn harvest sunnies bloomed just when the others tanked.

I don’t know if this is normally their season, but the garlic chives decided to bloom.

I grow two giant pokes as ornamentals and winter bird feeders, along with cosmos and grape in the summer. Yesterday involved major pruning to relocate the gate.

In addition to the giant poke, the Garden Tower remains a conversation piece. This one has been harvested and replanted in some spots for fall.

Fall is in the air, but I look forward to the September, October and November blooms: pineapple sage with its gorgeous red flowers, pink asters, another round of echinacea, sedum, unbelievably large marigolds … I don’t even know if I’ll have room for mums this year!