I’m sorry, I thought I’d posted a garden update!

It’s that time of year here in my area, the time when you aren’t yet overwhelmed with the harvest, but you can see it coming. The time where your main task is to water, water, water.

Here’s a little on how my backyard urban garden is doing (in pictures):

My Walla Walla sweet onions that I planted from starts did well in the container, but not as well in other places. The storage onions I started from seeds have not done well. Sigh. I may give up on trying to grow onions from seed.

My basil is wonderful, as always, and I need to make pesto to freeze to take advantage of it. Last year I dried some for the first time ever. For some reason my cilantro isn’t growing well. I think I experimented too much this year on mixing up my own potting soil. Again, I should probably not do that again.

My cabbages all got ripe at the same time and then split! Argh. My sister and I decided to pool ours together and make sauerkraut.

The beans are always a treat. They just keep going and we enjoy them fresh for dinner. These are all bush beans because they are so much quicker than pole beans.

Also I included a mini pumpkin plant that I let grow. It was a “volunteer” and although I didn’t know what it was at the time, it’s looking good and I enjoy using them to decorate. All of the volunteer sunflowers that I replanted along the fence are also doing well and got super tall. I know it’s only a matter of time before they fall over. But since it hasn’t rained, they are still reaching for the sky!

And last but not least, I’m getting a few tomatoes and cucumbers! Just enough of everything to keep it interesting.

How’s your garden growing?

Sandra Smith is the author of the awesome and award-winning middle grade/YA series, Seed Savers. Visit her Facebook and Pinterest pages. Follow her on Twitter. Sign up for the newsletter!