The End of the Spring/Summer Garden

I decided that before I start talking about my Fall/Winter garden, I should update everyone on my Spring/Summer garden.

This was our garden on April 20th. Everything was thriving despite our battles with the leaf cutter ants:

I took this picture when the tomatoes started coming around in May.

This was one of the last pictures I took of the whole garden on May 28th. My squash plants had already died. I'm still not sure what happened. They just shriveled up. The tomatoes did really well through the end of June. You can see in the picture I have them tied up to the roof in order to keep them from falling over. Then it got so hot they started cooking on the vine. They were literally bursting open.

I harvested our carrots near the end of June, not long before I pulled out all the tomato plants.

After that I was left with my two little nasturtiums and a watermelon vine. I had started the watermelon inside and it really struggled. I decided to put it in the ground and see what happened. It grew and flowered but never set any fruit.

Our pepper plants surprised me though. In case you've forgotten I planted them in pots with the rest of our plants in March. They died in May and we replaced them. The new plants didn't really grow much all summer. Then all of the sudden in August they bloomed and we had peppers. They are teeny-tiny red hot chiles.

The ants came back in August and completely stripped my nasturtium plants overnight. There was literally nothing left. I was too depressed to take photos. In retrospect it was kind of funny it happened so fast. I pulled them out and the watermelon as well (since it wasn't doing anything and it was starting to shrivel from the heat. Too many consecutive days of 100+ temperatures and no rain was too much for our plants). I lost a bunch of flowers too.

But we planted a few Lantana bushes and they've done really well. They are native to South Texas and thrive in the heat with little water.

All in all, our garden was a learning experience. We ended up with some radishes, tomatoes, carrots, and peppers. We were able to add peppery nasturtium blossoms to our salads throughout the summer. For a short period of time we had a wonderful crop of yellow crooked neck squash. Obviously, we didn't grow enough to store up for winter (or really even impact our grocery store and farmer's market purchases) but I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about ants and L. had fun every single time we watered the garden and picked tomatoes.

We'll definitely be planting a garden again...