Fabulous Tales of the No-Work Garden

As yesterday’s harvest (above) can attest, it’s amazing what you can get out of a garden even if you completely abandon it for more than a month. As I noted in the previous post, we were out-of-state for all of July, with the only garden support being a neighbor watering our hanging baskets. Even after we returned, however, it took us the better part of two weeks before we recuperated enough to spend much time on the garden. I finally found a weekend to get out there and tackle the weeds, spending a total of about four hours yanking them up, which in truth definitely didn’t qualify as “no work”. Actually, I prefer to let the weeds grow as thick as my thumb -- it's so much more sporting that way…

As it is, work has kept me so busy and exhausted at the end of the day and I’m still spending very little time in the garden. With the exception of my thick layer of mulch from my bi-monthly mowing (I love getting away with that in a rental!) and the aforementioned weed-pulling, I’ve given the garden very little additional attention in recent weeks.

Here’s a shot of some well-performing cucumbers, plus some viny squash and potatoes:

As mentioned we experimented with some baskets this year, including peppers and tomatoes (with mild success). Here is our good-sized sprig of rosemary:

And some tasty Romas:

These four plants have more than 50 tomatoes hanging at the moment:

This is the volunteer squash that overtook my compost pile and produced the two butternut squashes you saw in the first picture:

And an overview of the bulk of the garden. As a side note, having very like-minded neighbors is a rare and valuable gift.