It’s the middle of summer, and both of our gardens are rolling at full speed!  I wanted to jump on here and post an update of our harvests so far, both in Bakersfield and Santa Barbara.  I love seeing all of our hard work come to fruition as the plants grow and time passes, it’s definitely my favorite aspect of gardening.  I hope you enjoy seeing what we are growing this year, and would love to learn about any interesting and fun things you are growing!

Bakersfield:

We’ll start off with the smaller and much hotter garden, my Bakersfield pots.  This year, we put in four eggplant plants and have started harvesting off of two of them!  My banana pepper and poblano pepper have been thriving this year, both producing far more fruit than last year, which has been very fun.   My tomatoes have reached the point in summer where they are getting too hot and too much sun, but they are making a few little sungold cherry tomatoes here and there.  We’re thinking of covering them with some light fabric to shield some of the light and help them out, so I’ll keep you posted if we move forward with that direction!  Pictures from my little Bakersfield garden hauls below!

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Santa Barbara:

We have put a lot of effort into our plot in Santa Barbara this year, rewiring every bed to prevent rampant gopher attacks, which seems to be paying off very nicely.  You are probably aware of our crazy zucchini plants, which are nearing the end of their season and might actually get pulled this weekend (so sad, I know).  They have blessed us with abundant fruit (we harvested 20- 25 every weekend), and half of my freezer currently contains zucchinis in some form.  It was a very successful year for them, and at this point they were definitely the heaviest producers thus far.

We also have harvested our first round of green beans, with the second round probably ready to harvest this weekend.  Crazy to think that that bed will be empty soon too, as they were planted back in March and are now reaching the end of their growing cycle.  We have also started harvesting handfuls of jalafuego peppers off of our one plant, which has been super fun for salsa making and taco nights.  They do have a nice but manageable kick, and I’ve been enjoying them!

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Last we checked, we do have tons of tomatoes setting, but none ripened to report (yet).  Fingers crossed for this week (which is something I’ve been saying for four weeks now!).  Other things to come include different varieties of peppers, yellow crookneck squash, cantaloupes (!!!), cucumbers, and 898 squash.  We also have some bok choy that has been coming in nicely (we harvested some of that last week!), lettuce, and some rogue sunflowers that the birds planted and we’re letting grow, because hey, why not? We’re very pleased with our gardening adventures this year, and I’m excited to post more updates as our tomatoes start coming in!  Happy summer, friends!

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