Summer Squash and Strawberries

 My Zucchini plants have hit their stride and I have to stay sharp and pick them small so I don't get flooded with squash.  My favorite way to eat these is to grill or fry them with onions and serve them on buttered pasta with garlic salt.  But last week I did make Blueberry Zucchini Muffins because I had wonderful, fresh picked Blueberries.  

Clarimore and Dunja Summer Squash

I always plant two seeds together when I plant Zucchini.  One plant grows left and the other grows right making an attractive mound of leaves instead of ending as scraggly, one sided plants.  Sometimes I over indulge with too many Zucchini plants, but usually I just plant one mound, and maybe keep a backup in a gallon pot in case of squash bugs.

This year I mixed my varieties so one mound is producing two different squash.  It makes for a nice, colorful harvest.  My favorite varieties (mostly for their disease resistance) are Clarimore and Dunja.

Note the old kitchen knife stock in the seam of the raised bed size.  It is always there available for cutting off a Zucchini without tearing the stem.

My Seascape Strawberries planted as bareroot plants this spring have finally begun to grow and produce a good crop.  The rest of my plants are Honeoye Junebearing which I have planted several times.  But I keep seeing good reviews of the Seascape Day Neutral berries which continue to produce berries all season.  I made freezer jam from the June harvest, but it is nice to have berries all summer.  And not just one or two like other varieties, but a good handful.  This is the second handful I have picked and the first one was more impressive.  I just didn't have a camera with me.   These could have gone another day or two to sweeten up more, but we had a rainy day forecast and rainy day Strawberries are blah.  I love Strawberries on my salads, and it is nice to have a bowl sitting on the counter for snacking throughout the day.

We are currently enjoying a much needed all day rain.  The temperature is 59F (15C) and the house is opened up.  My plans for my non-gardening day are to bake a cheesecake with Blueberry topping and to put up a batch of Dill pickles.

Long Term Fixes

Sometimes you will have something to fix in the garden that takes a long... long... time.  Back in March, when the snow melted, I noticed that we had a Vole that had nested in one of the evergreen grasses that are up against our deck.  And also that the three Prima Ginger Echinacea plants had suffered quite a bit of Vole damage.  Bed and breakfast. The one in the bottom right corner of the photo below was completely adrift having had all of its roots eaten off below the surface.  The other two also had the delicate roots completely eaten, but each was still anchored by one root the thickness of a pencil.  I heeled the other two in well, but the one that was completely detached I took into the garden, potted in a gallon pot, and left it there in the garden where I could keep an eye on it.

When gardening activity began in May, I would keep it watered and about once a week I would lift up on it to see if was growing any roots.  It was putting out green leaves, and little white hair roots, but they were not anchoring it to the soil.  It needed water at least twice a day and would sometimes look awfully wilted and miserable.  Still I did not give up and around Mid-June it finally gave resistance to being moved and at that point it took off and even flowered.  The other two that I left in the bed were fine with their single roots and grew as normal.  So how do I prevent this next winter?  For one thing I am cutting back those Carex grasses.  Also, I will put wire cloches on the Echinacea and pin them down hard.  In the past, the wire cloches have proven to turn the voles away from Primrose and such.

There is a product created to protect fine roots in Vole situations.  They are essentially chain mail jackets and can be purchased on Amazon.  After the damaged one had rooted in pretty well, I transplanted it into one of these bags.  You just put the bag in a gallon pot and fill with soil.  I gave it some more weeks to recover from that, but it was no longer happy in a pot, difficult to keep watered in this hot weather.  Now it is planted back in the landscape and has perked back up.  When we clear the beds in the fall, I will unroll to top of the bag and hopefully, the combination of cloche and bag will protect it.  I have hesitated to dig up the other two and bag them because they have been growing so well.  Maybe later.

By the way... those red (actually deep tangerine) I started from seed this spring.

I'm still working my way around all of the Daylilies, cutting them back.  The first ones to be cut back have already pushed new growth, and some of them are even putting out new flower stems.

There are a few Daylilies that I simply removed.  I don't like their color or form well enough to try to protect them, but I still don't want the deer eating them.  I'm replacing them with something I like that the deer don't like so much.  Choose your battles.  So now I have a few open holes prepped for next year.  The Daylilies had already outgrown their holes anyway.

As I am clearing the planting spots, I am correcting another mistake I made.  Some of the holes are just too close to rocks.  The below hole, for example, was very difficult to get past the rocks and down to ground level to cut off the foliage with a trimmer.  I cut out a larger space in the road fabric and I am replacing the Lily, which had to be cut to the ground once or twice a year, with something that doesn't require such drastic pruning.  Probably a Butterfly Bush.

While we are out here, take a look at these volunteer Petunias.  This is one of the planters that took the place of the Whiskey Barrels.  I planted Yellow River Hosta in them, and I think that when those plants are mature, their large, three foot span, will look quite impressive in these planters.  In the mean time, though the Hosta are doing well and putting on new growth, they don't look very pretty.  Four or five years ago I had planted Sugar Daddy Petunias and each year I get some volunteers seeding themselves.  Even though I completely dumped the soil out of these planters, turned it over, and put it back, the Petunia seeds were just waiting for another chance to do their thing,

The Hosta makes a nice center piece, but until it fills the pot, we can have other things in there too.

White Marigold Reviews

 One of my annual basics is Marigolds.  They are inexpensive, easy to grow, and adaptable.  Pollinators like them.  Rabbits and Deer don't care too much for them.  Their only natural enemy that I can see is slugs.  But that is easily solved by slug bait, and it is sometimes useful to know where the slugs are as long as you have a spare Marigold or two to replace the ones they skeletonize.  I don't mind replacing a few Marigolds if it means I can bait and defeat the slugs before the Dahlias emerge.

I have always scattered them around the vegetable garden for color but a few years ago I started using them to construct decorative hedges here and there.  For these I preferred the Vanilla F1 variety.  They were the right height with a tight and tidy form.  And they really were nearly white.  They are quite a bright spot in the landscape, and easily seen from any distance.

Vanilla

The past couple of years, Harris Seeds has not produced and marketed them and, unfortunately, there is nothing quite as good on the market.  First I tried saving seeds from the last of the plants from the seeds I had left, but because they are an F1 Hybrid the results were varied and none of them close to what I wanted.  I've tried Snowball (not bad but fewer flowers) and White Swan (too tall).  This year I tried three more varieties, and they are beginning to show their true colors.

Vanilla Cream

The best one is Vanilla Cream.  It is compact and full of blooms.  But as you can see it is not as white.  The photo above and the one below were taken within minutes with the same camera settings, but nearly imperceptible changes in light enhance the yellowness so that one minute you are happy with the shade and the next you realize they may be yellow afterall.  From a distance they still read as white.  More of a French Vanilla Ice Cream white.

Moonlight (below) is quite plainly yellow and did not have very good germination, survival or growth rates.  They are not bushing out even as well as a standard yellow variety.

Moonlight

Creamy White was showing promise.  It is a vigorous plant, a little late to bloom, and very fluffy and rangy.  That wouldn't be a big deal except when the blooms finally began to open up...

Creamy White

...they were sort of a cross between anemone style blooms and single flowers and not even remotely like pompons.  But they are quite white.   The plants were way too tall for what I wanted along the shorter Dahlias even though I had already pinched back the main leader about eight inches weeks ago.  Once I saw what the blooms would be like I went ahead and pruned them back hard for size control.

I am now waiting for the Creamy Whites to get over sulking and put forth even a single bloom.  Obviously they are not a strong performer, because even the four plants along the side of the bed that I only pinched and did not prune hard have failed to bloom at this late date,  The Vanilla Cream are good enough that I went and purchased enough seeds for next year when they went on sale.  I may also go back and experiment again with Snowball but next year is the Semiquincentennial and I am planning a Red White and Blue theme in my annuals and I will need some reliable white Marigolds for that.

Expectations

 This is about the time of year when you find out whether or not your garden will meet expectations.  Mine is doing better than average I would say.  Some things are missing the mark by a little bit, but most are meeting or exceeding my expectations.  Below is my favorite view of my garden.  I sit in a chair beside the Apple tree, under a striped umbrella if the sun has come 'round the tree and consider what needs to be done.  Everything here is neat and tidy with no incomplete jobs.  And just look at that Sweet Corn!

The Corn on the left is Gotta Have It.  I have grown it quite a few times and it has never gotten this tall.  It is only a couple of inches short of nine feet. Over the years I have decreased the number of rows I plant in a raised bed.  I know that "they" warn you that you cannot grow just a little bit of Corn in beds and to get proper pollination you are better off growing it in blocks than one long row.  Well... I've kept decreasing the number of rows in each bed.  I started with five, and the past few years I have decreased until now I am down to two.  Obviously the Corn is doing that much better with less competition for resources.  The Corn on the right is Solstice and is about seven feet tall.  According to the catalog, Solstice should be about six to six and a half feet tall and Gotta Have It only seven feet tall.

Over in the flower beds, the Dahlias are starting to shape up to my vision.  The bed below is a color scheme of dark red, white, deep pink, and some light creamy pink.  Almost every variety is blooming and they look great together.

The Marigolds and Celosia on the edge are not doing what I want.  The Marigold variety turned out too tall so I've pruned it back hard to keep it from overtaking the Dahlias and the Celosia was proving difficult to get through the spring (not unusual) so I replaced it with a different store bought variety.  It's in there... but you can only see one in the picture.

I Photoshopped the photo to show what my vision was.  I'll get it right next year.

Across the walkway is the Orange/Peach/Copper selection.  Less than half of the varieties are blooming but they are looking great together.  It is fun looking forward to each new color.

Bloomquist Pleasing

Bloomquist Pumpkin

Summer's End

Ice Tea

Everything Cucumber

 It is Cucumber season.  These are number 4, 5 and 6.  Soon I will be having them for breakfast and lunch.

I have started collecting up Pickling Cucumbers for Dill Slices.

OOPS!

That's OK.  These over grown picklers are just as good to eat as slicing Cucumbers.  There are all kinds of things to find hiding in vines,

Cantaloupe

Pumpkin

Micro Tomatoes

And the wild Blackberries are starting to ripen.

Stop and Smell the Flowers

 This is one of those rare days when I didn't do any real work in the garden.  I watered the vegetables and some containers and I picked some cucumbers. And that is it.  But I still walked around everything looking for potential problems and just enjoying the flowers.

Below are some of the Coleus cuttings that I overwintered under a grow light.  There are four plants in the 16 inch container.

ColorBlaze® El Brighto Coleus

The Celosia in the fire pit planter have reseeded themselves for two years now.  I've included a photo below of the original planting of the First Flame Celosia.  You will see that the plants are getting taller and he flowers narrower.  I don't know how much of that has to do with growing conditions.   I need to raise the soil level in this planter next year which will cover the tiny seeds too deeply.  It will be a good year to start with a fresh batch of seed.

This Year

2023

The Coreopsis that I planted to replace the dead Lemon Squeeze grass has bulked up and put on a nice show of flowers.  This is my first time planting Coreopsis.  I like them and next year, provided these survive the winter, I am going to replace two of my least favorite Daylilies in this area with some taller varieties of Coreopsis.

Coreopsis Uptick™ Cream

There are still a couple of late blooming Daylilies looking nice.

Orange Smoothie

Sundried Tomato

Dahlia of the Day:  Bloomquist Pleasing

Tomorrow afternoon it is supposed to rain.  We need it badly.  My 500 gallon rainwater tank that I use to water the raised beds with is half empty.  I will need to go out in the morning when it is cooler and get some more cutting back done.

Dahlias from Seed

 I have always liked Figaro Dahlias as an annual.  This year, on a whim, I ordered a pack of seed because I was also growing out my Bee's Choice Dahlias from seed I saved, and I wanted something to compare it to.  I found that I had a poor germination rate, or poor seed viability from my own saved seeds but that otherwise they grew about the same.  The Figaros are way ahead of the others on flowering time which is probably influenced a lot by the time they were taken out of their pots.  The others had to wait for the Peas to be finished while these went in the ground in early June after the weather sorted itself out.

I put them in corners in front of my white Marigold and Ageratum combination.  I am getting a good range of color but I would like to get some deep pink or dark red.  This is the drawback to growing your own from seed.  Had I purchased these in a nursery, they would have been weeks ahead and I would have seen hints of what color they would bloom.  Still, it is a good experiment and I will do it again.  I have six plants still to reveal their colors.

Another seed experiment:  Last year I started a tray of Citrus Blend "Panolas" (a cross between Pansies and Violas).  I love the Orange, Yellow and White color combo and they are hard to find in stores.  So I grew them myself and saved the seeds last year.  I didn't have anywhere to plant them.  But, while waiting for the bare rood Seascape Strawberry plants to take off, I realized that the strawberry bed would probably be a good spot.  The Pansies will grow early in the spring before the Strawberries put on a lot of growth.  Then they can reseed themselves and die back while the Strawberries are doing their thing.  So a few weeks ago I scattered my saved Panola seeds in that end of the Strawberry bed and now I have a nice little crop of color in there.  All I had to do was remember not to weed them out when I was maintaining the Strawberry patch.  This bed gets so weedy with Oxalis.  I need something nice to take up the space and fight with the weeds.

Dahlia of the Day:  Brown Sugar

The Brown Sugar Dahlia is supposed to be a rusty, brown or copper colored flower.  The one I got several years ago has proven to be a deep burgundy red with no color fading at all.  It is, in my opinion, a poor example of Brown Sugar so I have renamed it "Sugar Brick" 

Pickle Season Has Begun

 My pickling cucumber vines have been producing very well.  It took three days of picking to gather a hydrator full of cucumbers.  There are four pounds here.  I also picked my first slicing cucumber today and there are three or four that will be ready in a day or two.   I like to pick pickling cukes quite small to get more small slices to cram into the jars.  A couple of them got away from me and got too big, but still not over ripe.

I wanted to put some onions in the jars this time.  I've never done that, but as a child one of my Mom's good friends made pickles with her grandmother every year from her own garden and my favorite part of the pickles were the little rings of pickled onions in each jar.

I just use Mrs. Wages quick process packets, but this year, since I have peppers and onions handy, I plan to experiment with pickle spices from scratch and make some sweet relish.  We do not use much relish, so two or three pints will keep us in relish all year.  But first I have to make the dill slices to store.

I made six pints to store, which is about how many we will use in a year.  There is also a seventh, lightly packed jar with some of the largest slices that I will open first to use,

Red-Spotted Purple Butterfly on Vanilla Marigolds

P.S. I just went out and picked my first handful of Seychelles pole beans for supper.  The Monte Gusto, despite being thriftier than the others, have just blossomed.  They should only be three days behind the others but they are lagging.

Afternoon in the Garden

 I have always said that June is my quiet time in the garden.  All I do is weed, water and wait.  That routine is extending well into July this year.  No complaints... but things are a little delayed.  I trim a few things.  Sit for awhile.  Fertilize something.  Go back and sit....  

Food is coming out at a good pace.  There are zucchini and onions and green bell peppers.   There is always Cole Slaw in the refrigerator. I am accumulating pickling cucumbers to make the first batch of pickles.  There are a handful of green beans ready to eat. 

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on a butterfly bush

Honey Bee on a Buttercream Sunflower

Daylily of the Day are these white lilies.  Either these are the deer's absolute favorite, or their bloom time coincides with my desire to fight about it running out.  I dug a big clump of them out and liberated it to the edge of the field after the deer ate every bloom and bud during a rainstorm.... through the netting.  I'm going to replace it with a rock.