Late Summer Garden

I was just out watering and this little beauty stopped in to visit:

So lovely.  The garden is doing okay despite its neglect over the summer.

On the first trellis are squash and cucumber.  I planted just one cucumber plant since I'm the only one who eats them and it is producing beautifully.  I planted two squash plants and they are growing well but the flowers have yet to open.  One vine has produced two female flowers and one rotted off and died before it ever opened.  The other vine has had no female flowers at all yet.  I'm hoping they are just slow to produce since I was slow to plant them.  Here is my one lonely female flower which I'm hoping will open up and get pollinated.

This variety is called Greek Sweet Red and is supposed to be a lot like a butternut.  Last winter I combined a couple of different recipes to create a chicken butternut squash chili that was a real hit so I'm hoping to be able to have a nice crop stored away for this winter!  One of the earliest male flowers on that same vine looks like it is just about ready to burst open so I'm keeping the hope alive.

On a side note, growing squash up the trellis has been working fine.  Every week or so I go out and weave the end through the trellis once again and it carries on.  However, the one vine has climbed up six feet and is halfway back down again and will no doubt keep on going.  Luckily for this summer, I have one bed I never finished filling and planting so I'm planning to let the vines keep growing that way and onto the patio if need be.  So far I've had no problems with squash bugs which took their toll on my pumpkin vines last summer.  I'm not sure if that is from getting them up off the ground or not.

By the way, that nylon netting I originally built my trellises with which is supposed to be indestructible?  One crop of peas and it fell apart.  I've now got wire fencing lashed to my PVC frame and that is working well so far.  The second trellis is all tomatoes and the poor things just needed an earlier start than they got.  However, it looks like I may get some tomatoes yet.

That is if I can beat the squirrels to them of course.  I also planted four Roma-type tomato plants in front of the first trellis on the left side and they are doing pretty well and should produce a good crop.  The remainder of that first bed is green beans.  I'm realizing that I probably need to plant more than four square feet of bush green beans to have a really decent crop all at once.  Well, lesson learned for next year.  The second bed that looks bare in front has just been replanted with broccoli, carrot, and spinach seeds and I'm trying to keep it moist and keep the squirrels and birds out until they all germinate.  I'm not sure if it's too late for carrots now or not but I figured it's worth a shot.  Here is today's harvest:

In another week I think I'll have enough green beans to make a three bean salad for us!