We came back from a family vacation to the Poconos to find that our garden exploded. This was, by far, the biggest harvest I’ve gotten thus far.

What you see are the following:

Peaches
Lemon
Rhonde De Nice zucchini
Yellow squash
Cucumbers
Tomatoes
Eggplant
Green beans
Grapes
Hot peppers

Whew! And that’s not also counting the corn that will probably be ready next week, the kale, and all the herbs. We seriously won’t need to go to the farmer’s market until September! I’m canning pickles at the clip of two jars a week, and I have so much squash I may have to give it away unless I think up something else to do with them besides veggie spaghetti and zucchini bread!

‘Black Gold’

This yield is even more prolific than last year, and I’m beginning to think I know why…the compost! Last year I was all about using Boogie Brew, a compost that cost me about $30 a bag. Now that I’m producing my own, complete with a teeming army of worms that speed decomposition and literally poop garden gold, I’m brewing my own, and I’m saving a bundle and ensuring that I’m going to have about a hundred or more pounds of produce before the season is over.

Twice a year I enrich the soil by mixing compost with fresh potting soil, and once a week or so I brew a “tea,” made out of about two cups of compost seeped in a five gallon bucket of non-chlorinated water and aerate it with an aquarium pump I bought at Petco. The goal is to propagate the beneficial bacteria that give a direct and immediate benefit to the plant, and applied to the roots with a watering can with one part compost tea and two parts non-chlorinated water, or as a foliar spray. I do both. Compost tea not only fertilizes, it provides protection from disease and even makes your yield more nutritious and better tasting. It takes about 48 hours to get those bubbles at the top–the byproducts of waste produced by the good bacteria and it feeds on the black strap molasses it put into the water for it’s food.