Karen's Garden Delights Journal
3rd week of August 2011

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It has been a week of very pleasant summer weather, 80s by day and nice cool sleeping weather at night. We are noticing the evenings getting darker much quicker and the sounds of fall insects are starting to appear. I'm always a little sad to see signs of summer coming to an end. But another thing that starts happening in August and September is that the gardener becomes weary of picking veggies. One morning this week I just was not excited about picking for customers but did it anyway. Those are days when I start to look forward to winter days. I am doing more preparations for winter days by planting more greens and storage crops. Another batch of turnips went in the ground and I'm starting to transplant some of the lettuce. Here are flats of cold frame plants like kale, chard, bok choy, lettuce, sorrel and more. Some will be for sale during the cold frame seminars coming up and some are for my fall planting. There are always plenty of leftovers that I end up making room for too in the garden since I can't bear throwing away good plants. I also have to remember, these will be the plants that will make for our early spring eating which is always a welcome treat and a good seller. It just feels strange in August to be preparing for March greens.

This week I thought I was short on beans for veggie baskets. I wasn't as diligent in planting succession rows of green beans this year and should have planted another trellis full of rattlesnake pole beans (a much requested favorite.) So as we struggled to come up with 2 quarts of reasonable looking beans from the current rows I decided to check the rows of Jade beans we had finished picking a few weeks ago. I was wonderfully surprised to find they were loaded with beans again and we ended up picking a whole bushel of lovely beans! This is one of the traits of the Jade variety that I like, that they can produce a "second crop" of beans that is still long, deep green and beautiful enough for using. So customers each received a generous amount of beans, my garden helper that day went home with a bag full and we froze another two gallons of beans for the winter plus did a jar of lacto-fermented dilly beans. I love surprises like that. I did plant one final row of Provider Beans (only 52 days rather than 60 for Jade) so that we potentially will still have fresh beans in October. I made sure they were well watered before I closed up the row and I will continue watering till they pop out of the ground. Planting this late always risks frost but boy do those fresh beans taste delicious.

The cockscomb are very majestic right now. I love looking at them in the garden but should harvest them soon so they are in prime shape for drying. Behind them is a bed of purple salvia that I am regularly cutting for pressing along with Queen Anne's lace, celosia, lavender and scented geranium leaves. I should have a good supply for making cards this winter and also want to have enough quantity for a few wedding invitation orders. Soon I'll need to start pressing goldenrod for one of the wedding invitation orders. Also you can see the Indian Summer Rudbeckia in the background which will be going for an Amish friend's wedding next week. She tried to grow two rows of Mexican Sunflowers for the table arrangements and they are big beautiful green plants but no bright orange flowers. She called me looking for alternatives so I took over a few of my Mexican sunflowers plus some Rudbeckia and other bright colored flowers. Her arrangements are in small black vases with cat tails she gathered from their pond and dried wheat so we played around and found a good combination of flowers that would be simple to arrange. So I will be cutting every Mexican Sunflower I have next week for her plus a few complimentary flowers and even some foxtail millet (a weed!) They will probably have a lovely show of Mexican Sunflowers about a week after the wedding.