Best parts of the garden

Summer is almost over, & the summer crops are begging to die back, so most of the veggie garden is looking pretty scrappy at the moment. However the plants along the western fence line are hanging in there, & actually doing very well. Happily it's rained vigorously recently, so that can only help :)

I have lots of plans for the garden now that we're headed into autumn, but for now I'm just gathering the last of the summer harvest so I can hack up the plants & lay them down as mulch. I'm hopeful that a lot of them will self-seed themselves for next year, but only time will tell...

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The most successful basil plant we've grown, I'm pretty sure this is one we grew from seed, but I can't quite remember for sure... In any case it's doing very well, I put it in a more shaded position & used a technique I thought of after watching a permaculture lecture :) We're looking forward to having some fresh basil pesto soon.

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This is the 2nd sunflower to bloom, & the 3rd one isn't far off :) It's a much smaller variety than the giant russian, so it reached full size & flowered in much less time. Before growing them I was never much of a fan of sunflowers, but now I love them, they're really beautiful plants, & the way they move around to face the sun is pretty incredible <3
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& finally the zucchini! Just for it's versatility alone it's like the king of vegetables, great in everything from pasta sauce to cakes, the mighty zucchini is definitely one of my most loved vegetables [:D If you take a close look at the photo you can spot one growing in amongst the leaves (it has 3 good sized zuccs on it at the moment)
I love this plant, I love zucchinis, & I love this garden, despite not yet being very productive I've still enjoyed it so much, it has easily been one of the most rewarding & satisfying projects I've attempted（*⌒ヮ⌒*）
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We also plan to get as many trees in as possible over the coming weeks to try to increase shade for next summer, as well as provide useful green mulch, etc.
I'll try to keep up to date with our efforts in the garden, & hopefully we'll begin to see some higher yields as we improve the soil :)