Annual Labor Day Garden Check-In

End of 2025 summer season brings plenty of pumpkins and powdery mildew.  I'm so used to every season ending in powdery dust it doesn't even faze me anymore.  I always seem to get enough yield where it's never a major fail.

This year, the best producers were pumpkins and acorn squash.  The worst producers were zucchini (yes! it's possible to have a BAD zucchini year, apparently!) and cucumbers.  I think the zucchini is suffering from poor soil where it was planted.  I think the cucumbers got muscled out of space by the acorn squash.  Every year, it's something!

Early Giant pumpkin, isn't quite "Giant" but that's because I don't pile on the water and fertilizer.  In a future year, when I'm retired, I may try to see how big I can get a pumpkin to grow with a little more TLC than they get from me now.

Lil Pump Ke Mon produced a good 5-6 decorative pumpkins this year!

Not a fantastic pepper year, but I did get a decent variety of sweet ones.  This is some form of cubanelle, I think, purchased from Cottage Gardens in Petaluma, because few of my own starts germinated this year. :(

Sun Gold cherries.  Most don't make it into the house.  I just eat them all standing there in front of the plant. :D

Herbs did pretty well this year.  Top to bottom:  Basil, chives, thyme and oregano.

I tried staggering my melon plantings, and I think it worked fairly well.  I would have liked to get more than just one or two little ones a week, and I think many in my later planting won't ripen before the season ends.  But it's still been nice to get them over a longer period then getting overrun with too many all at once.

I staggered my green beans this year, trying to plant less all at once.  I still got too many!  Here they are sharing a trellis with Big Beef + slicers from Johnny's.

Chocolate sunflowers from Baker Creek.

Acorn squash was the big winner this year.  I've ended up with over a half dozen.  Gonna try them in soup.

Renegade pumpkins, smaller and rounder than the Early Giant.