sunflowers growing and growing....
We returned home from an unprecedented two-week vacation to find a few surprises. While our house-sitter took excellent care of things, it was obvious we have much work ahead of us. One of the most fun suprises was how much the sunflowers had grown and bloomed. This one is approaching 15 feet in height!
harvesting garlic
harvest ready to cure
Before leaving on vacation, we shut off the irrigation to the garlic in order to allow it to dry out prior to harvesting. It was in good shape for harvesting and is now laid out on racks in the garage to cure for a couple of weeks before cleaning and storing. We have been planting hard neck garlic so will store the individual heads rather than braiding them into a bundle as you might with soft neck garlic.
beans and cucumbers are finally climbing up the new trellis
Tomatoes, beans, basil, and squash are making good progress. We really notice the growth after being away for so long. Unfortunately, the weeds are also making good progress.... as are the pests!
the pests have been busy while we were all gone - tomatoes (L) and grapes (R) have sufffered
This year the squirrel population (and audacity) is much greater than we have witnessed since living down here. Not sure about the cause but the effect is clear. While the dogs are here and we are all spending regular time in the garden, the squirrels don't seem to be quite as troublesome. We all left for two weeks and came home to lots of broken branches, partially eaten tomatoes, chewed on zucchini and more. It also seems the raccoons have worked their magic on our grape harvest.
Vacation was wonderful but it is good to be home and back in the garden!
overview is disappearing behind the super tall blackberries
sunflowers everywhere!
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