Our unusually wet summer continued through the month of August, bringing with it the worst Mexican bean beetle and squash bug plagues I’ve ever experienced.  After the initial harvests of bush beans, these pests did in my several varieties of pole beans and my several varieties of cowpeas.  A plague of rabbits didn’t helped things either.  Weeds were more aggressive this summer than ever before, and by late August the garden was a rather sorry sight.

But the late season Kennebec potatoes did well.  Although slightly damaged by wireworms and white grubs, we did manage to harvest about fifty pounds of Kennebecs, bringing the total potato harvest to something over 120 pounds.  The Thelma Sanders heirloom acorn squash were very prolific (the middle picture above shows about a third of the harvest).  And I’ve just begun to dig up sweet potatoes, a new crop for me.  I grew two heirloom varieties, Chesapeake and Continental Red, from Sand Hill Preservation Center in Iowa, a source, believe it or not, of over 200 heirloom varieties of sweet potatoes alone.