Late Lunch

 The Sweet Corn is Ready!

Summer Rains

 We have entered a rainy period which is fine.  It cuts down on worry about how the plants are coping with high heat and turns your focus to tidying up every day.  I just cleaned these Petunia planters up yesterday morning.

That's the thing about traditional Petunias.  They don't handle rain well.  The deep purple blooms shed water and seem to hold up the best, especially the first couple of days.

The red ones - not so much.

At least they aren't white, which would be translucent and ultra icky.  No matter.  They need to be dead headed anyway so they don't set seed and quit blooming.  I just have to wait for the plant to dry out a little.  You ought to see my fingers after 10 minutes of Petunia trimming.  Thankfully, Hydrangea flowers don't do that.  

Little Lime Punch Hydrangea (planted 2024)

Little Quick Fire Hydrangea (planted last month)

The thing about rain is that it gives all of the weeds a quick boost.  You will come out in the morning and an area which looked fine yesterday will have all of these happy little weeds.  Below is the pea bed that was mulched.  It won't take long to pull these weeds, especially with moist soil.

Eww!  This pea bed with no mulch is a different story!  Purslane!  The best way to deal with this is to pull the more mature plants at the far end and then rake over it with a garden rake uprooting all of those tiny babies.  I will leave the garden rake right there and every time I walk past I will take 30 seconds to rake it again so that the roots dry up and die.  A nice hot, sunny afternoon would help cook them.

Here is a little update on the grape vines.  The first one is growing like crazy.  It has a really nice growth habit that will easily lend itself to a multiple vertical cordon style.

In the spring, I will prune it as diagramed below.

Right now I am just making sure I tie up the stems that I want to turn into cordons so they are protected and will harden into the form I want.

The second vine has one main leader.

It may require a different form just because it fits this particular vine's growth habit.  Maybe next year's growth will provide what I need for two opposing cordons.   We shall see.  It's kind of fun.

Planting Bearded Irises

 My Bearded Irises arrived yesterday and I planted them out today.  In the rain.  When you wait for months for a plant, it doesn't matter what the weather is when it arrives.  Bearded irises always arrive cut back and bare root.  I don't want them hanging around in a box any longer than necessary, but it is still delayed gratification because you order them in April, they arrive in August, and they don't bloom until next May or June anyway!

I have had Bearded Irises before.  I think the few that I still have here and there were ordered 20 years ago.  They are not in the best locations, they have been swallowed up by other landscape and they rarely bloom.  In fact, the nicest one got left behind at the neighbor's house back when my husband used to live there.  I still get to enjoy it as I have visitation rights!

 When I was thinking of some sort of colorful plant for this landscape bed, I thought - "well, Bearded Iris would probably stand the deer pressure."  A little pepper spray should be all that is needed to discourage them.  And it is a good environment for irises.  They can handle shallow, well drained (let's face it, it's dry) soil with not much mulch.  We blow leaves across this bed in the fall so I needed something that can take the abuse.  A cut back Iris that doesn't need deep mulch will be a perfect compliment to the rugged, ornamental grasses.  And they will provide some interest in the early summer before the grasses grow tall.

Dodging raindrops I went out with my auger and prepared enough holes.

I had already ordered and sorted the varieties with a particular layout in mind and had been tweaking a spreadsheet for months.  I took into account the mature height of each, as well as their bloom season.  I want the tallest ones in the back of course.

I ordered 16 varieties representing a wide range of colors. That is the nice thing about iris.  They do have a pretty good color pallet.  Red and Orange are poorly represented, but they have just about every other shade.  Ironically, my least favorite iris colors are any purple and yellow combinations that end up looking muddy brown to my eye.  And that seems to be their most natural color combo.

Bleh.

Irises are rhizomes which sit at the surface of the soil.  They do not like to be buried too deeply.  That makes it a little tricky to get them securely placed.  Until they start to root in, they can easily be kicked over, pulled up, or otherwise molested by wildlife and general weather and traffic, so I pinned a wire cloche over each of them.  These will probably stay in place until after leaf blowing season, at which point I will need to reassign the cloches to the Primroses for the winter.

I just don't know what I would do without these cloches.  I always seem to have a use for them.  Now - we wait.

Pumpkin Patch Update

 This is a zoomed in view out one of my bedroom window's each morning.  The pumpkin flowers are awake and ready for business.

Pumpkin and squash flowers only open up for a few hours first thing in the morning and if pollination does not occur, the flower is done.  No day two for these.

And we have a lot of flowers.  They are a hive of activity.  Honey Bees galore.

Despite having planted these a week or two later than I would have liked, we already have some good sized pumpkins cooking in there.

We have short round ones and tall thin ones.

Once I have located a pumpkin I usually try to stand it up on it's blossom end so it will develop evenly and not with a flat back.

They are still pollinating and this week's babies will have time to develop.

A couple of plants were obviously cross pollinated with the zucchini plants last year and are Alien Squash Beasts.  All the seeds I planted were either older seeds from the store bought pumpkin, or second generation seeds from the ones I grew last year.

No matter.  We will have plenty of "normal" Jack o' Lantern style pumpkins.  And now that this growing experiment is a success, I know how any plants this system can support and I know that I can protect the plants from deer destruction and other critters, until they are large enough to fend for themselves, I will actually spend a few bucks on "good" pumpkin seeds next year.

The fabric can be left out over winter and the seeds planted earlier and we should be in the pumpkin business in a big way.

First Tomato

 I picked my first tomato today.  It still needs a couple of days to ripen fully but I don't want to miss it!  It is beautiful!  I also tried a couple of ears of sweet corn today.  It was a little immature but still sweet and tasty.  It needs another week to be in its prime but it is so hard to wait and it isn't possible to eat it all a once anyway.

My Dahlias are beginning to bloom well now.  This one would have been in its prime yesterday or the day before when it was overcast and rainy.  I want the whole flower garden to look nice when they start to open so I spent some time deadheading the Marigolds and Zinnias today to bring on some fresh blooms.  I am looking forward to some beautiful color.

Early August Status Report

 The first tomato of the season is taking its sweet time.  The plants themselves are looking amazing and they are covered in fruit.  This year I got the pairings exactly right.  Two on the left are the super vigorous varieties that are much like Brandywine, Elsie's Amish Tomato and the Barlow Tomato.  Two in the middle are the black Paul Robeson and Carbon.  Two on the right are Sun Sugar Cherry and Adelaide Festival Dwarf.

The Barlow tomato first spotted on June 23rd is just starting to change.

The Sweet Corn will also be ready any day.  I have been feeling the ear tips but I haven't gotten anxious enough to start peaking inside yet.

I am seeing some good sized ears in here.  There should be as much as we want.

The pole beans are climbing and starting to produce.  They really stalled out there in the heat wave because I did not have them mulched and the Marigolds weren't big enough to properly shade their roots.  The vines are really healthy and should produce well for many weeks to come.

It is proving to be a stellar year for Peppers.

The plants are LOADED with Peppers.

Now that I have more than enough pickles made, it is time to pull the tired out Cucumber vines.  The vines are still flowering well but not setting fruit.

I remove all of the pickling vines but left the two slicer vines because they had some nice cucumbers still developing on them.

My refrigerator is full from these two vines, and the cukes should last for weeks still.

The Blackberries will be ready soon.  Below is the first clump of berries but there are many more behind that.  I have hoops set up and I am ready to throw some insect netting over them to keep the birds from stealing my berries.  I am not willing to share these first precious fruit.

That pretty much covers the food coming out of the vegetable garden.  I would like to show off the Tiara Blue Supertunias that Romence Gardens shipped my by mistake.  I wasn't in love with them when  planted them but they are really growing on me.

The white Marigolds are in a bit of a lull right now but are covered in buds.

My annuals should continue looking beautiful all through August

Working Out Landscape "Problems" for Next Year

 Now that I am through with another season of discouraging deer from eating my Daylily buds, I am starting to make plans for changes that will improve my life next year.  I have ten Daylilies that are still difficult to protect.  Three of them I don't feel the need to save or even replace, and six of them I do want to replace with something more suitable.   Last year I dug out quite a few and replaced them with other plants.  Between the lily dig outs and the winter failures, I had to replace twelve plants.  Now that is complete and I am making plans for next year's round of replacements.

These Daylilies are going to have to go.  The yellow Happy Returns that flank the entrance to the walkway are now done blooming and will have to be cut back anyway, and the tall white lily is just beginning to bloom this week at the point that I am sick and tired of spraying repellent every day.

These yellow lilies may as well be replaced with annuals.  In years previous I have planted annuals along the right side and I am going back to that.  A row of "white" Marigolds or Geraniums would look nice, but will still have to be sprayed.  So far, the deer have never eaten Petunias.  I think I may try those next year.  That plant on the left of the walkway is the original Happy Returns plant and I have divided it many times so that I, and our neighbor, have it in a dozen other locations.  The neighbor wants more, so these will not go to waste.

This photo is from ten years (or more) ago.

I felt like I would like a medium sized perennial or shrub in the place of the white lily.  Not far away in the same bed I have this Little Lime Punch panicle hydrangea.  The deer will trim it a little in the spring when the tips are growing, but it is not a priority to them so it is easier to protect than lily buds and they do not totally ruin it.  Once it blooms it is safe and will look nice for months compared to a lily which only blooms for a week or two and must be protected to the very end.

The Hydrangea is budding right now and it will be covered in large blooms until winter.  While the white Daylily (below) is at it's prime and doesn't really look all that hot.  I have decided that Daylilies are not front door plants.  They just look too plain or too scraggly most of the summer.  I mean if this is the best it can do.... there are a lot of easier plants that look nicer for longer.

My intention was to mail order a Little Lime Punch or a Little Quick Fire which are both panicle Hydrangea that bloom on new wood.  But, the local fancy nursery that I knew had a good inventory of Hydrangea just put their stock on 25% off so I went and got a beautiful two gallon plant for the same price as a one gallon plant usually costs.  After the extended rain the other day, I took my transplant shovel around and started cutting loose Daylilies while the soil was soft.  I put my spade in next to that white Daylily and the whole clump came up.  No cutting needed!

I was thinking that I may put a medium sized decorative grass to its right. but I already have some good vertical elements with the Echinacea.  I think a lighter colored Heuchera may be more appropriate on the corner replacing the yellow Daylily.  I guess I could always divide a shorter grass I already have because the deer are not interested in any of my many decorative grasses.  

Which brings us to the dry creek bed.  I had six Daylilies left in that area.  Four of those are on the replacement list.  The reason I hadn't already removed those is that I really liked a couple of them and they are a bugger to get out of that rocky planting situation.  This large pink one is gorgeous, but sort of stuck out amid the more subtle wildflower look of the other flowers in the creek bed area.  I have a couple of ideas for a more appropriate, more deer resistant plant to replace it like maybe Ironweed.  Because the pink Daylily is so pretty, the next door neighbor took it and tucked it in a corner where it will hopefully fare better than on the edge of my open lawn.

Nearby it was two toned lily.  The deer love this one.  Not only was it on the edge and easily accessible, it seems to taste better than some of the others.  Truthfully, the deer seem to prefer the lighter colored blooms, and while they will eat dark red ones, those are easier to protect.  The deer are not as determined to eat every. last. bud.  It was always the first Daylily to sustain deer damage every year.  I am just going to replace this with a Foxtrot grass division I already have potted up.  I think it is a Sweet Sugar Candy variety and I have more of those in a safer place.

And lastly, this little lily.  I had planned to remove it last year, but I had run out of ideas for replacement plants so I just left it.  It managed to produce one bloom this year, and the deer reached under the net and ate the rest.  I have more of this color in a protectable spot at the end of the vegetable garden so it was dug up and will be replaced, probably with Yarrow.

I am in the process of digging out half a dozen more Daylilies in less conspicuous spots.  Most of them are not even being replaced.  If the space ends up looking too empty, I can always plant something new in the future.  Sometimes the peace that empty space affords is more valuable than the satisfaction of a nice looking plant that you have fought for.  Gardening should bring joy, not frustration.  There is no reason to keep a plant that is bogging you down.