Garden Update: End of July & A Death

This summer has been unusual. Today at the end of July, it's beautiful and not at all humid. Usually by now, it's freak'n 100 degrees with 100% humidity here and it's just not. It almost feels like California weather with a touch of humidity. A fabulous day for gardening.

Right now, I'm trying to decide which raised beds to rest, and what to plant in the beds that I'll keep active for the fall. As I've said before, this season has been weird. Not a very good growing season for me so I'm hoping my fall crops will do better. I'm planning to grow the usual suspects: collards, kale, purple broccoli (didn't do well in the spring), rapini (because I need rapini), komatsuna, Korean mustards, bok choi, turnips and carrots. I will definitely grow garlic this fall instead of early spring. The rogue garlic that just popped up this spring did well and produces a nice and big fat bulb!

Right now, the one crop that's doing really well is my cowpea....

They totally took over one of my beds and now trying to take over another...

The beans look just like the long beans hence the ability for the cowpeas and Chinese long beans to cross pollinate. I believe you can eat the young cowpeas just like the long beans so I'm going to try some since I'm going to have a ton of beans. This is definitely something I will grow again.

My watermelons, melons and winter squash always seem to do well. Good Lord. I think I'll be eating Seminole pumpkins all winter long.  They are supposed to be good keepers, thankfully.

This is the Sweet Siberian watermelon. The ice box size is fabulous. The plant itself didn't sprawl out and take over my lawn. Nice and compact and the flesh is sweet.

This is the Japanese Cream Suika

Also a compact ice box size watermelon. I have to say, between the two, I'm favoring the Japanese Cream. The flesh was firm and sweet but not too sweet. The boy seemed to agree!

My turmeric finally started growing. For a minute I thought the rhizome rotted but about a week and half ago, they started to sprout and now...

On a more serious note...three years ago when I started my garden adventure, I decided to keep things as natural as possible. I was and am still all about working with nature instead of fighting nature. That includes the wild life entering my garden. At this point, I don't even use natural, organic insecticides to keep bad bugs out of the garden. The balance seemed to happen all by itself. I actually don't think I sprayed at all this growing season. I still don't really fence although, when I grow peas and spinach, I fence because the resident bunnies can't help themselves but beyond that, I allow whatever little critter to enter their garden of eden. Over the three years, I've allowed several generations of bunnies to hang out and it's worked just fine. This year we had two baby bunnies decide to stay around the garden.One stays under my marigold bush in my herb bed and the other smaller bunny hangs out wherever he can. I knew eventually, nature would figure out a balance with the bunnies, too.  So..... on a sad note.... this little guy (the smaller of the two bunnies)...

became lunch...

I now have resident hawks. I say hawks plural since the one that killed this little guy was definitely a juvenile. I'm glad that there are predators and eventually I knew they would come.

This big fella killed a bunny earlier in the month. He/She probably had babies, which I'm all for. Unfortunately, the presence of the hawks spooked my other baby bunny and he went missing for a couple of days until this morning when I checked and found him in his usual spot...

Hang tight little guy. Yes. Nature is a bitch.