This is mostly a picture post! I didn’t give any August garden updates. But perhaps you saw the ‘preserving’ posts- those were my garden updates for August.

The tomatoes continue to grow. We’ve canned many jars of tomato sauce and fermented many batches of salsa!

We are still harvesting both bell and banana peppers. Today we canned two pints of pickled banana peppers and my second son sliced and bagged bell peppers for the freezer.

We are no longer harvesting any green beans. I was thankful to preserve many jars and some bags for the freezer. Now they are drying on the vines for next years’ seed! NOTE: we grew all of our green beans from last years’ saved seed meaning zero input cost!!

Our flowers continue to attract pollinators and make lovely bouquets on my kitchen table.

My middle son picked the last of our cucumbers mid-August and pulled out the cucumber vines and nasturtiums. They were beginning to wilt and the leaves showed signs of yellowing. But, even after that, we still found to cukes growing on our sunflowers!

Our fall broccoli and butternut squash are rather wilty currently. I sprayed them this afternoon with an organic spray called Bt with a bit of spearmint essential oil added. It’s mainly for the broccoli but I thought it could potentially help the squash as well. We shall see! Praying that it keeps the caterpillar moths and worms off of the broccoli.

Can you see our oat cover crop popping up? I was thrilled that it germinated! We haven’t had much rain at all so I’ve been watering. I’ve not used a cover crop before. This is a trial! But hoping it works well. Oats are a winter kill crop. I am planning that the oats die and then either lay down or we’d crimp them- then I could use them for mulch next year!

Here is the spray we used! Let me know if you have tried it before. I heard about it from a new favorite vlog ‘More Than Farmers’ out of Ohio.

Ok! There is our end-of-summer garden tour! Do you have any suggestions for us? Stay tuned for a pantry tour soon!

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