Monday, July 7, 2025

Early July Vegetable Update

 I like to go through about twice a month and just take photos of each raised bed so i can compare year to year.  This year's garden is feeling pretty good... that is until Facebook popped a photo of mounds of colorful, blooming Nasturtium from a few years ago.  Okay, my Nasturtium are still tiny this year.  But overall, this is one of my best tended gardens and the list of things to change next year is very, very short.

The peas came out yesterday.  They were still green and beautiful, but completely picked clean.  The best part was - not a weed to be seen.


That bed has now had mulch added, the open pollinated Dahlias from seed I saved last year are transplanted and the other end is set up for a later planting of Cucumbers which are seeded in cells.  The Dahlias were starting to suffer, and their little tubers were poking through the drain holes, but they will turn around quickly.

Here are the rest of the beds one by one:

Pickling Cucumbers and Slicing Cucumbers
I am going to keep these from mingling in the center so when the pickles have been made, the vines can come out.

From the other side.  They are flowering, and will soon be shading the Celery

Solstice Sweet Corn planted May 20th

Gotta Have It planted June 1st

Clarimore and Dunja Zucchini together
It took about three tries and a dozen seeds but I finally got a Dunja plant.

Cantaloupe and Pumpkin

Cole Crops

Cauliflower

Golden Acre Cabbage

Indeterminate Tomatoes

Carbon babies

Bell Peppers full of buds

Potted Bells

Havasu Peppers

Havasu Baby

Sweet Potatoes, Carrots and Herbs
I have been pulling a lot of carrots

Dill, Sunflowers, Sweet Potatoes and Eggplant

Sunflowers soon

The Pole Bean bed still looks ragged, but things are good in there

First seeding of Seychelles is climbing

Dwarf Tomatoes and Onions

I am still learning about this growing Onions from seed thing.
The one in the middle is one of mine, and the larger on each side are the nursery grown Candy Onions

Dwarf Tomatoes

Setting fruit

Micro Tomato

I am proud of this Eggplant.  These are the two spare plants I hid on top of the potting bench which ended up rallying and out growing the other pair I had in a larger pot.  I have switched the pots now so the larger plants are in the larger pot.  Not long ago Aphids found these and I spent about a week spraying with Neem Oil every morning.  Now I am getting an occasional flea beetle but the Aphids are finally gone.  I wrote at length in this blog entry about my love of soft, blemish free Eggplant leaves.

Yukon Gold Potatoes
I dug a plant the other day and they are beautiful and scab free.  Iron-tone (with a 17% sulfur content) seems to have done the trick on that.


Sunday, July 6, 2025

Morning is Blooming

 Morning is the best time in the garden because you get to see what all is going to happen today.

Clarimore Zucchini
Both a male and female flower.  Yay!


Pickling Cucumber.

Little Prince Eggplant

Hootenany Dahlia

And for work - the peas are coming out and the Bee's Choice Dahlias are going in and English cucumbers are being sown.

Friday, July 4, 2025

Knee High by the Fourth of July

 Farmers used to say that a field of corn should be "knee high by the Fourth of July".  Modern corn varieties will grow much faster than that.  My sweet corn is generally waist high or better by the fourth and it is right on track.


The earlier variety is forming some tassels


Daisies are such happy flowers


Thursday, July 3, 2025

All The Buzz

Last year I purchased both Mason Bees and Leaf Cutter Bees from Crown Bees.  The Mason Bees didn't stick around long although I still have a few.  The Leaf Cutter Bees were a good success.  You have to remove the nesting material and store it over winter in a constant, cool temperature.  Mine stayed with my Dahlia tubers.  When the temperatures reach a consistent 70F the new bees should emerge.  I began to see some activity last week.  Today it looks like everyone is out and beginning to nest and lay eggs.  My little bee chalet is a hive of activity.


Their favorite hang out right now is the Queen Anne's Lace (below)


Tomatoes are self pollinators so we don't need the bees for that.  The Carbon plant is beginning to set fruit.  It is surprising each year to see which plant produces first.  It seems to be different every year.


We will need the bees for the Cucumbers.  They will be flowering soon.



Further Notes on Deer-Proofing

Some more tips on what I am doing to discourage the deer.  In some cases, my netting is wide enough that it needed a sort of center tent pole to hold it up above the flower stems to reduce the number of flower buds that get caught in the net.  In those few cases, I placed a regular aluminum garden stake in the center and used a black ping-pong ball fitted on top of the stake to hold up the net and prevent it from sliding down the stake.  This sort of disappears from a distance and was an inexpensive solution.


There have been whole flower beds that I have netted from the deer.  I created a "room" around the Dahlias that I will remove later when the foliage thickens to the point that the deer don't want to walk through the middle.  You can see the net shining in the morning sun.  


I also created a "room" around my 4 in 1 Pear tree that is going to stay up year round.  The deer walk through to the one side of it all year and the smaller limbs just get big enough to harden up and balance the tree and then the deer rip them back off.  The tree is getting a big hole in one side and its starting to piss me off.  So I took the conduit I have for use as bean poles or whatnot, and I used a post pounder to sink them in the ground and I clipped a net around them.


As far as Hosta go.  I place nets over each plant and hold it down with rocks or landscape staples depending on where the plant is located but I have to sacrifice the blooms.  Initially I was not a fan of Hosta flowers and I used to trim them off anyway.  And that is how I learned that those were what was most attractive to deer.  Now, years later, I am starting to get just a little bity bit bitter about not being able to have them.  However, I would rather have Hosta with no flowers than no Hosta. I do admire unmunched Hosta with flowers when I see them just because of the novelty.


I just reach in and snap them off.  If I leave them, they are irresistible to deer and they will stay to eat the foliage.  If they never find any tender scapes, the net and the repellent is usually enough to protect the plant, but now and then they try tearing the net off.  They get discouraged before they do too much damage to the plant.


Another strategy is simply to not plant anything the deer like.  That's what I have going on on the far side of our property that we tidied up last summer.  I don't have to worry about the deer eating ornamental grasses so I have divided five kinds of grasses and placed them as a backdrop.  It's a little too ...green.  And there are still large areas of bare mulch.  But I did not spend any money on additional plants last year.  I just divided and moved around what was already there.


The only spot of color is a Johnson Geranium that does have a net in it to keep the deer from eating it down too far.  I spray it after the rain and so far they have left it alone.  I want to see how things fill in with the existing plantings before I add anything next year.  For color, I am only going to consider deer resistant plants.  I am thinking of Salvia or maybe Veronica, alternating pink, blue and white.  Maybe two or three collections of Bearded Irises for showy color.  I would love to have some different foliage color and texture and there are a couple of shrubs I am considering but I am going slow because I don't want to have to do much experimentation with the deer and rabbits having full access to this area.


And finally, the Blackberry patch.  I don't often fiddle with the Blackberries much.  I am usually content to sample a few each year.  But this one plant is so loaded with berries I was starting to think... gee, there might even be enough there for a small cobbler.


Between the deer nibbling the brambles, the birds picking at the berries, the Japanese Beetles devouring the foliage, and the occasional bear who will just eat everything, I need a pretty comprehensive cover.  I already had to drive a couple of posts and lift the canes with a wire because they were so heavily laden they were laying in the lawn and making it difficult to mow.  So I used a summer weight floating row cover.  Netting would not be enough to stop a deer or bear from eating berries, and netting will snare birds especially if you put it between them and something they really want.  So a solid cover was the only safe option.


Now this won't stop a hungry black bear, but we haven't had as much bear activity this year since everyone in the neighborhood learned last year to protect their Humming Bird and Oriole feeders.  So with luck, I will get these berries before anyone else does.

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Looks Good Enough to Eat

The Battle for the Buds is going well this year.  All of the Coneflowers and Deerlilies Daylilies are beginning to bloom.  They are all fresh and delicate and yummy looking.

Prima Ginger Echinacea

This is when they are at their most vulnerable to deer.


I can understand why they are appealing.  When the Daylily buds are at this stage it looks like a candy store.  Those buds must just pop in your mouth like a gumdrop.  I can see the allure.  If I had been browsing on twigs all day, the sight of dewy, fresh, poppable buds would be mouth watering.

Happy Returns Daylily
Every morning when I open the drapes and look out my bedroom window and see all of these yellow Lilies and white Daisies still intact it puts a smile on my face.


It makes all of the work worthwhile. 


And it still requires work.  Removing all of the orange lilies along the front fence was a huge step in the right direction.  Not only does it save me time and money, but it was a huge attraction to bring the deer through in the first place.  Next I have made some pretty good strides in protecting the plants I want to keep with netting.  I still have plants in tempting locations (below).


These plants have suffered a little damage here and there.

Empty Stems

Even though they are netted, I still spray with Repels-All after every rain.  This makes them smell less like food.  I spray pretty much everything, including shrubs and annuals.  Every evening, the last thing I do in the garden is walk through with a bottle of Bonide Hot Pepper Wax and give the most vulnerable blooms a light spritz, especially nearest the spots I walk by every day and want to enjoy the blooms.  Also, the flowers along the edges of the netting and anything that looks like it will open in the morning.


This way if the deer do munch on those, they will get the most unpleasant taste I can muster and move on.


I have to say that the Daylilies have never looked better.  Plants that never had a chance before are absolutely full of buds.


Of course Daylilies and Coneflowers are not the only thing that looks appetizing.  I have to be protective of the Clematis vines.  Those are full of delicate buds and fragrant flowers too.


In the vegetable garden, I picked a gallon of peas.  This is the second and largest picking for this crop.  There are still peas coming but not in this volume.  By the time I got them all shelled my thumbs were sore!  I had to use the big pot to blanch them.  I freeze them in pint bags for individual meals.