Here’s a backyard garden update.

First, the cucumber patch went crazy this year. We had a ton of cucumbers and Susan canned several jars of sweet and dill pickles.

We had so many cucumbers that we had a hard time giving them to friends and neighbors. It was a wet summer and cucumbers thrive when they get plenty of water.

The production tailed off in August for a variety of reasons. We had a bug problem and we had a time problem. Susan sprayed the cucumbers with a special oil and that helped but at the end of August, our crop was done.

And our daughter, granddaughter and son-in-law moved in with us for about 10 weeks after our granddaughter’s birth and that kept our full attention away from the garden.

Still, it’s nice to know that we grew a lot of food.

Susan’s tomatoes did fine but we didn’t have a bumper crop and they seemed to come in later this year.

This is nothing like slicing open a ruby red tomato freshly picked from the backyard. We like to put them on slices of fresh mozzarella for supper. They are mighty tasty and really good for you.

Again, there were some bug problems on the tomatoes. We don’t use harsh chemicals on our plants because we eat the stuff we grow and sometimes the pests are worse than normal.

My pumpkins were a disappointment.

This year, I planted with seeds that I had harvested from pumpkins I grew two years ago. I stored the seeds in our refrigerator and I actually started them indoors. I put potting soil in toilet paper rolls and the seed sprouted very well.

When I transplanted them, two thirds grew very well but about one third fizzled and I had to pull them up.

Pumpkins spread all over the place and I tried to manage the vines as best I could this summer. Just like the cucumbers, pumpkins need a lot of water and this summer accommodated that.

The vines produced a host of male blossoms but only a handful of female blossoms. You always have a lot more male blossoms but this year’s crop of female blossoms seemed very slight.

Only four turned into pumpkins and vine beetles infected and ruined three of them. It was very disappointing because we did use the oil and a few other methods to deter the beetles to no avail.

I don’t think I will plant pumpkins next year and see if that helps get rid of the beetle infestation. Susan makes pumpkin bread and pumpkin pies from scratch but over the years, we have discovered that you can buy pie pumpkins really cheap a couple of days after Halloween.

Susan planted sweet potatoes in buckets this year because it is easier to harvest them than if they are in the ground. The plants seemed to flourish. We planted sweet potatoes a few years ago and got a bumper crop. And if you store them correctly, they last for up to a year. And they are delicious.

Susan always has luck with her herbs, including basil and rosemary. And we had some basil plants pop up in unexpected places this summer.

Susan’s flowers have done well this year, too.

My lawn has never been this green in August/early September. We have four very large trees in our yard – three in the back and one in the front – and they soak up a lot of water in a dry summer. The front yard needs to be reseeded this month but the backyard is going great guns.

This is the first summer that I can recall where I had to mow every week. Generally, I mow once a week until August, when I mow every other week.

We don’t garden just to produce stuff to eat. It’s a hobby. It gets us in the backyard when it’s 100 degrees outside. Otherwise, we would be sitting in the air conditioning with not much reason to go out in the heat.

And it helps us meet our neighbors. Folks stop by while we are working in the garden and visit. People used to do that in the good old days but now it is a lost art.

We really don’t plant anything in the fall. Not too long from now, I will have to collect a ton of fallen leaves and that is plenty of work. I used my lawnmower to pick them up and then we used the leaves as mulch for our garden.

My parents and their generation knew how to grow fruits and vegetables and raise chickens in the backyard. I never did while I was growing up and now I am learning. My kids have no interest in gardening (they all rent) but I hope someday they may see the value of growing food in their backyards.