Goodbye to the Summer Garden...and Come On Fall!

The drought and persistent 100+ degree heat we've had all summer put a real strain on the garden. It's been about 6 weeks since our water district started mandatory water rationing, allowing us to water  only on Tuesdays, Thursday's and Saturdays. When the heat is 105 degrees or more EACH and EVERY day, it really doesn't matter if I water on my 3 allotted days--nothing wants to live. So, long story short: the garden suffered, the garden got bugs and then the garden died. Even the watermelons and the peppers. Ugh.

 I'm so thankful I was able to get a good garlic harvest early this spring and that I took that chance and planted my corn and pumpkins so early. But now it's time to say goodbye to the summer garden. All in all we had a pretty good year, most of it early on, but a good year nonetheless.

Successes:

White California Garlic

Pickling Cucumbers

Straight Eight Cucumbers

Yellow Squash

Black Beauty Zucchini

Green Spineless Okra

Roma VF Tomatoes

Marconi Peppers

Big Bertha Peppers (though the heat kept them small)

California Wonder Bell Peppers

Ambrosia Cantaloupe

Hale's Best Cantaloupe

Sugar Baby Watermelons (we only got a few but they sure were tasty!)

Golden Bantam Corn

Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin

Failures:

Strawberries (dehydrated on the plant and came down with red stele)

Dr. Wyche's Tomato

Fairy Tale Eggplant

Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans (struggled then devoured by grasshoppers and blister beetles)

Kentucky Wonder Bush Beans (just never grew)

Henderson Bush Lima Beans

Marigolds 

Black-Eyed Susans 

Ever Bunching Green Onions

Our temperatures started to break last week and our forecast calls for highs in the upper 80s and low 90s all week. Yay! It's sad when I do a happy dance about 90 degrees when my favorite temperature is 60, but it's been such a looooong summer. I'm just ready for it to be over. So I'm looking ahead to the fall garden. 

This morning we took down the dead remains of the three sisters garden (which actually ended up being a two sisters garden this year because my beans didn't make it) and started making plans for what to plant next in that location. It seems to me there's a pattern that's supposed to be followed, like corn one year, legumes next, then potatoes after that? I don't know, I can't remember. I need to go look that up.