It's Crying Time at the Community Garden

The invasion of the critters continues, and it is not pretty.  And, the rains have (for the most part) dried up.

This is the time that tries the Otsiningo Park community gardener's soul.  July is the month of garden harvest, and garden heartbreak. And sometimes both.

The critters and insects have done their work well.  Beans delayed. Chinese greens brown and full of holes from flea beetles.  Our squashes are turning yellow.  We have harvested the grand total of one squash.  (so now you know where to send your spare zucchini.)  We can't figure out why the critters are out in full force this year.  At the house, not satisfied with petunias, they are now hitting our nasturtium.  Nasturtium!  But enough of my whining.

I've wanted, for a while, to post pictures of our community garden.  I had taken some back in June.  Now might be a good time, as we travel down Memory Lane before the invasions started.

This first photo was our hurried attempt to salvage our pole beans.  The white stuff is a row cover fabric, which has proved to be our best friend in some of the critter wars. But you can't get pollination with the row covers.  Only now are the pole beans starting to climb the poles.  We also have (bush) filet beans, which got chewed pretty good, and we've gotten a handful of those beans.  They are wonderful - and expensive to buy.  So I hope the rabbits enjoyed their gourmet treat.

This next photo isn't of our garden.  Our garden suffers from the fact that my husband (who does 99.9% of the work) just can't get there every day (the garden is about a 10 minute drive from our house.)  No, this is the lovely garden of a man of Asian descent, who is there almost every day, and his garden is a work of art.

The last two years he's given us some starts of lettuce.  We are seriously thinking of going totally over to plant starts of most vegetables, although we would have to buy most of them.  We just don't have the energy for this war.

I don't know whose garden the last two pictures are of.  I suspect it may be a BOCES garden.  Whoever is responsible for it has done one heck of a job.  The green things on posts, incidentally, are Topsy-Turveys.

And finally, another view.

Tomorrow, Wildflower Wednesday.