The Kitchen Garden in Early September

It's now September. The kitchen garden has hit its peak. Many of the vegetables are nearing or ready to harvest and the morning glory are in full bloom. The days are getting cooler and the nightly lows, lower. 

With cooler nights come an increase in the moisture in the air. This leads to powdery mildew in the Winter Squash patch each year. Normally I don't see my first breakout until mid-September. This year however, the "Guatemalan Blue Banana" squash developed powdery mildew in August. It quickly decimated the two plants and jumped over to the "Butternut" & "Delicata" plants. As you can see in the above picture, the "Delicata" leaves are now a snowy white. I am hoping the plants can hang on long enough to finish ripening their fruit. The "Butternut" in particular needs another ten or more days for its fruit to reach that perfect butternut color.

While the "Guatemalan Blue Banana" did get powdery mildew first, it also set and ripened its fruit first. I like this photo. The "Delicata" rambled right over the "Guatemalan Blue Banana".

Here's a nice big "Butternut". As you can see, the fruit is still very green.

In contrast, this long "Delicata" looks ready to harvest.

The foliage on the "Nicola" potato plants is finally starting to die back. They will be ready to harvest in a few weeks. I am anxious to see how this variety did planted in the grow bags.

The few "Good Mother Stallard" beans that survived the rabbit are just now setting pods. We are going to need a warm, dry September if I have any hope of harvesting some dried beans from these plants.

My three "Red Bull" onions look good. Their tops haven't fallen over yet so the bulbs are still growing.

The tops have all fallen on the "Frontier" yellow storage onions. It's time for me to pull them and then let them cure. It looks like a nice harvest this year.

My volunteer "Galina" yellow cherry has been busy pumping out the ripe fruit. So far I have harvest 30 little gems off of this plant and there are many, many more yet to ripen. It's turned out to be a favorite of a co-worker of mine.

Here is a nice cluster of "Early Cascade" and below, a "Black Krim". The rain has been causing the "Black Krim" to crack.

All of the morning glory plants are producing beautiful displays of color each morning. It really is "peak" season for them right now. I certainly love the cheery color splash that the morning glory plants give to the kitchen garden. And the hummingbirds love them too.