Long lost garden updates

Happy August!  I've taken many photos of my garden over the summer with intention to blog, but never could afford the time. Long story short: we vacationed for two and a half weeks during late June and early July. That was bad. Really bad. Lesson: Never leave my garden during peak-growing times.

After returning from vacation, I spent a bit of time cutting grass (with scissors) that surrounded the squashes I had planted along the fence. My beans are all toast, as are my cubes. I also managed to spend ten to fifteen minutes a few days weeding, which felt horribly futile. Not only were weeds encroaching viciously on my vegetable plants, but the rains had washed a lot of nutrients out of my soil (a reality I gleaned from chatting with my seasoned-gardner of a neighbor last week).  

I managed to get the kids into our local nursery one rainy day earlier this week to pick up some fish-based fertilizer. I had refrained from ever using fertilizer to keep things as organic as possible, but I chatted with an organic farmer at my local Farmer's Market last week, and she suggested fish and/or seaweed based fertilizers.

My wee babe went down for his nap this morning at 8:30, and I managed to get Peanut outside to enjoy his sandbox while I labored away in my so-called garden.  After one hour I managed to remove weeds from my tomatoes and broccoli. Insane. But I figured there would be no point in fertilizing the weeds, so it had to be done.  I hope to get to my carrots and what's left of my greens this weekend.

Here are before and after photos from this morning...

And yes, my tomatoes are at least partially blighted.