The Thunder Moon

Once again, the Thunder Moon is a good name for this month's full moon (which was about a week ago - oops), since we got a bit more rain. The Cenizo in the front is in full bloom with its beautiful lavender flowers. My husband has built a nice xeric garden around it with some agaves and prickly pear cactus.

In the back, the Tatume squash is doing very well. Usually C. pepo varieties are very susceptible to borers, but I haven't done anything to protect it from squash vine borers, and it's still producing some fruit. The borers have gotten some of the vines, but it has plenty more.

I have some fruits at various stages on the vines. Here's a little baby one with the flower still attached.

When they get bigger they turn a dark green, similar to a big round zucchini.

And here's one that's fully ripe. Even though Tatume is supposed to be a summer squash, I'm letting some ripen to collect seeds. I'm just excited to have found a summer squash that doesn't get killed by squash vine borers!

The Moon and Stars Watermelon had one little melon on it, but it ended up shriveling up and dying. Now it's just growing vines. I hope I get some melons from it eventually.

The okra are growing among the watermelon vines. I planted them a bit late, so no fruit yet, but the plants themselves are doing OK.

The peppers I planted in the back aren't doing too great. For some reason, they aren't making a lot of fruits, and the ones they have made either got sunburned or pecked by birds.

Some of the sweet potatoes are doing well, and some aren't. This variety, an orange one called Diane, is doing the best so far, making some long vines.

The Calico lima beans are growing into lush vines, but with hardly any bean pods. I've harvested maybe seven beans so far. I'm starting to wonder if they need bean inoculant. I've never used it before, but ever since I've been growing beans at this location, they just don't yield well, and the beans I do get are puny.

The Dr. Carolyn tomatoes are the last tomatoes I have still producing. Their flavor wasn't that impressive at first, but as it's gotten later in the year, they seem to be getting sweeter. Maybe the heat concentrates the flavor.

The rest of the tomatoes look like this. Still a few green leaves, but no more fruits.

The eggplant is still the only thing in the front garden the deer haven't munched, which is interesting. That's not what I expected.

The peppers in the front, which are the ones that survived last winter, are finally growing back after we put chicken wire around them to protect them from the chickens and deer.

I've got only two Waltham butternut plants left that might now get a chance to grow since we put chicken wire around them.

The Rattlesnake pole beans are still getting eaten like crazy by the deer. Well, now I know not to plant beans in the front without a lot of protection.

 

We actually aren't have too bad of a summer this year. We actually got a couple of good rainstorms, once of which dumped 4 inches of rain on us. The deer and chickens are causing a much bigger problem than the weather this year.