The bounty of summer and the promise of fall..

Mid-summer in the garden is such a time of bounty that I could take dozens of photos a day of the different crops (and often do!) and post continuously! I woke up early this morning to make a few notes for today's radio show - it will be a fun one - and out of the corner of my eye, I could see something moving.. a deer, of course! Grrrrr.. so, I ran out and started throwing anything close at hand (a bouncy ball, a frisbee, a plastic trowel), but it was too far away and my aim is too bad! At this point, the deer have been making nightly raids in the top garden (we have two gardens of about equal size).. so annoying! The winter carrot tops have been well nibbled and footprints are scattered throughout the beds. I think the feet do as much damage as the mouth! Anyway, I could go on about the darned things all day, but I just took some garden photos and thought it would be better if I shared these instead..

The top photo is a yellow pear heirloom tomato and a black cherry heirloom tomato.. every day, we pick from about 10 types of small-fruited tomatoes and the big ones are finally starting to colour.. A handful of roma's are almost ready to pick (if I can just keep my hands off them for another day or two, they'll be perfect!). Here is a shot of the hubby's favourite summer breakfast.. eggs, with herbs, onions and tomatoes from the garden. He used yellow pear, ladybug and sungold tomatoes in this morning's scramble..

As a year-round veggie gardener (see the title of the blog!), I use my grow-lights throughout the spring, summer and fall. Right now, there is kohlrabi, endive, winter lettuces and more under the lights. I just seeded them a few days ago and they'll go to the garden in about 3 weeks. I do have two trays of seedlings that I grew in early August under the lights and have just finished hardening them off. See the bounty of summer in the foreground of the photo.. and the seedlings will give us food in the fall and winter.. In this photo, there are collards (2 types), kohlrabi, endive (2 types), lettuces, green onions and more. One cold frame is already full of swiss chard, baby leeks, bunching onions and napoli carrots (plus a few deer footprints - argh!). The other two cold frames will be seeded with a mix of winter hardy crops in another month or so.

Another favourite crop, Lemon cukes are crisp, delicious (never bitter) and adorable! Just look at them! We pick them, rub them on our shorts to remove the spikes and then eat them like apples.. sigh.. each plant is also prolific, producing dozens of the crunchy fruits.. I like to grow them up an A-frame trellis, along with our gourds, and they create a solid wall of foliage.. some escape under the deer fence and venture into the neighbouring woods and out onto the lawn.. we don't mind, they can do whatever they like, as long as they keep giving us lemon cukes!

This is Holy Moly pepper, a 2007 award winner. The biggest ones are almost 7-inches long and soon, they'll turn a rich chocolate colour. The supplier of my organic cow manure gave us a dozen late last summer and we liked them so much, we had to grow them this year.. soooo good!

Happy Gardening!