… About Our Garden: The Attack of the Powdery Mildew

This is the post I didn’t want to write, so I put it off for a few days (the photos are from July 5). Why? Because it’s “True Confessions” time: we aren’t actually good gardeners! We don’t really know a lot about gardening, and the little we do know we don’t necessarily do as we should. The secret to our garden is that if you put seeds or plants in the ground there’s a good chance something will grow! (Plus we get a TON of sun in our yard.)

So as you see from the photo above, there’s trouble in the Beard garden, and its name is Powdery Mildew. Of course I didn’t know that until I finally looked it up a few minutes ago — all I knew was that we’d had two rotten yellow squash and a bunch of white spots on the leaves. (That’s the dearly departed in the photos on the right.) I figured it was a mildew so we pulled out most of the really bad leaves and the rotten squash and hoped for the best. It ends up that what we should have done — that and give the plants a “spritz treatment” made up of baking soda, milk and dishwashing detergent. Thank goodness it’s supposed to be a little cooler for the next few days because it looks like it time for a “Squash Spa Day.”

So why did it happen? Was it something we did wrong? Absolutely! Basically, we did everything wrong. “Provide plants with sufficient spacing.” Nope — we planted close together and never thinned out. “Avoid watering in the evening.” We knew better, but we did it anyway! Of course you’re not supposed to water in the middle of the day, either. That leaves early morning, and you know that’s not going to happen (this is Loren we’re talking about). We’re also not feeling good about the potatoes — we kind of manhandled the plants because they were growing over the lettuce, and the vines didn’t break but they haven’t looked the same since then. Another case of overcrowding… but we’re adding on to the garden for next year and that should help everything do a little better.

But enough about the bad stuff. Although none of the tomatoes have turned red yet they’re definitely turning a lighter green — so they are progressing. And at least one of the broccoli plants is starting to get the little “nubbins” that form the buds, so I’m pretty sure we’ll have broccoli soon.

We didn’t notice it when we took the picture, but there’s one that’s almost turning orange (you’ll have to enlarge the photo to see it, and maybe use your imagination just a little!)

This is supposed to show the beginning of broccoli buds, but it actually just shows a blurry green plant. I’ll do better next time!

Best of all, we’re still getting plenty of lettuce, as you can see:

With the “picking station” set up it’s time to harvest.

Here’s the lettuce patch after the harvest. (We could have picked more but it was soooooo hot!)

The fruits (vegetables) of our labors.

So overall the garden is hanging in there but it’s not quite as lush as it used to be, especially after thinning out the squash. Even though we’ve been watering every day the heat wave has still been rough on it. And these pictures were taken on one of the hottest days, so once we have a few days where it’s not in the 100s things should start looking a little better.

And even if we don’t get any more squash, at least we got these! (Some time this week they’ll be roasted and added to some sort of pasta, so I thought I’d “commemorate” them with one last photo.)