Mid July Vegetable Update

 The pumpkins are growing well.  I am still able to cover them at night to protect them from any deer damage but I have to uncover them first thing in the morning so that the Honey Bees can get to the flowers.  All of the flowers close to the base have been male and those have gotten the bees interested in a dependable food source.  Now I am starting to see female flowers.

The vines are beginning to lengthen and soon they will not fit under the cloth.  I am watering these twice a week because we have had no rain.

The Sweet Corn loves the heat and is happy without mulch.  I am watering these daily.

The tassels are opening up and this morning they smelled strongly of corn.  The scent was heavy and sweet.  When the pollen releases these will be covered in bees.  There are a few corn babies with silk appearing.

The cole crops are doing well.  I only got one Cauliflower, the others bolted in the heat before the heads got more than three inches across.  The Broccoli started to send out side shoots but those are also bolting right away.  The Cabbage is good.

My Cantaloupe vines are small but flowering. I used the bed for Sunflowers because the Cantaloupe seeds were so spotty.  Why waste space?  I might get some and I might not.  That's the way Cantaloupe is for me.

The Cucumbers are super happy and I have started picking some small ones for salads.  It will be a couple of weeks before the volume is worth trying to make pickles.  I have been eating some nice zucchini.  Because it is just me I pick them very small.

The Zucchini plants survived the heat wave and are off and running.

The Blackberries are really surprising me.  They have several more branches flowering.  I won't be making cobbler this year, but there will be a good amount of snacking.

The Grapevines are growing well.

Pole beans are climbing and flowering.  There are a few baby beans in there.

The Peas are done.  I pulled the first bed and the second bed is ready to pull.

It has been great weather for harvesting seed.  I let the pods dry in the sun.

When they are dry and papery, but before they open on their own, I shell them into a colander and leave them out another day or two.  Once they are done drying I will weigh out a row's worth (2.5 to 3 ounces) and put them in an envelope.  I expect I have enough seed for several years.  If I am planting for food only, I can plant one bed instead of two.

The Sweet Potatoes are loving the heat.  The rest of this bed is a conglomeration of sage, rosemary, sunflowers, snapdragons, parsley and Queen Anne's Lace.  It is a pretty popular place for pollinators.

The Tomatoes are doing well.  I have half a dozen tomatoes larger than my fist and they are flowering again.  I am getting a few cherry tomatoes.

Onions are growing well.

Bell Peppers are starting to flower again at the top.  There are half a dozen good sized green peppers.

Havasu Hot Peppers are setting a second layer of blooms.

The Dahlias are starting to bloom.

This is pretty early for flowers.  Dahlias are so easy for me.  I have only watered these twice in order to give them fertilizer.

Crazy Legs

Bloomquist Gordon

The pink side is starting with the low plants, but I have buds on a couple of tall decoratives.

The direct sown Celosia are doing their thing.

Besides weekly fertilizer, I have had to hand water quite a bit.  The vegetables get watered well every other day.  There are some annuals and perennials that have to be watered.  For what I have to carry water to I am alternating, one day I water annual containers and the next day I carry water to the perennials and shrubs that were planted this year.  Petunias (in ground and containers)  get fertilizer every Friday.  July has been dryer than normal, but it hasn't been too bad for watering.

So that's what's happening in the garden this week.  Japanese Beetles arrived on schedule.  I go around and flick them into soapy water every morning.  I have started cutting back the early Daylilies that are done flowering.  Situation: Normal.

Early July Vegetable Update

 These twice monthly status reports are very helpful to me to look back on and gauge the relative progress each year.  I checked back to last year's post and I can see that the corn and tomatoes are doing well, the cucumbers are ahead this year and the beans are behind.  This is due mainly to the weather because the weather initially dictates when a crop can be seeded and then the temperatures will makes changes in the growth rates.  Initially, cold night time temperatures in early June stalled some things (tomatoes) and then the extreme heat affected others (pole beans).  Overall, it is a good year and things are on track.

Solstice Sweet Corn

Gotta Have It Sweet Corn

Both varieties of sweet corn showed tassels this weekend so I side dressed with fertilizer and put another layer of string to keep them from being blown over in the wind.

The cantaloupe vines are short but flowering.  The Sunflowers down the center are doing great.

I think the cucumbers are ahead.  There is fruit set on the earliest vines.  The zucchini are flowering like crazy, but the male flowers just started so the earlier flowers did not pollinate.

The Blackberries and Black Raspberries are growing great and I will get some Blackberries to taste.  This bed will need support, but I want to see the growth habits before I make any final decisions.  I think I will sink a post in the middle of each end and run a cattle panel down the middle.

Grapevines

The Pole Beans are behind despite getting a good start.  They suffered in the extreme heat, and I should have gotten them mulched ahead of time because the leaf tips nearest the soil burned a bit.  Now that they have mulch and cooler roots they are growing again and putting out flowers.

The early peas are pretty much done.

The vines are dying and I can start pulling dried pods.  Harvesting for seed is different than harvesting to eat and satisfying in a different way.

The later peas are in their prime.

The tomato plants are doing very well.  They have been trimmed and supported.

The early fruit set from when it was transplanted is growing, and the vines are flowering again.

The bell pepper plants are looking terrific.  These were pretty pale and spindly when I planted them, but they love the container set up and the partial shade from the fence rail and they are branching out well from the lower leaf nodes despite having shed all of the original lower leaves.

They are flowering and setting fruit.

My Havasu Hot Peppers are having a great year.  They grew well under the lights and were setting fruit at transplant time.

The peppers are just beginning to show some ripe (orange) color around the stem.

The onions are behind this year but I side dressed with fertilizer and they loved that heat wave.

All in all it is a good, average year.  No disappointments yet, and just your average challenges.  I didn't say much about the cole crops because I was too lazy to uncover them.  The Broccoli was good and the plants were healthy enough to leave standing for side shoots.  The Cauliflower has been slow and small.  The one that we already harvested was small but exceedingly sweet and the next one is about ready.

The Romaine Lettuce has been excellent and the Cabbages are ready.

Mid-Season Landscape Maintenance - additional work done today

 Today is our second day in a row of cooler and drizzy weather.  We got a little rain which revived some of the tired out perennials but did nothing for the rainwater tank.  It was a good day to catch up on weeding because the rain had softened the ground, and it wasn't radiating heat back up at me.

I pulled about ten pounds of weeds (seriously) from two of the landscape beds then decided to refresh the edging while I was at it.

I used a transplant spade to cut the grass at the edge then pulled it up and swished the mulch around.

This bed I call the "Spring Garden" because it is full of Daffodils and Primrose.  When we mulch in the spring it is difficult to mulch closely around the Daffodil foliage.  When I cut the foliage back the weeds start in the thin mulch around the bulbs so after I pulled all of them I went ahead and dumped some mulch on those thin spots.  That way the weeds won't come back this season.

I walk along this bed every day and it is easily visible from the house windows so having a fresh edge and nice mulch makes a big impact.

Here are some more pictures of bright spots in the garden.

Echinacea Cantaloupe 

Hosta

Cardinal Flower

Profusion Apricot Zinnia

Licorice Plant, Sweetunia Black Satin and Rediculous Coleus

Some of my tall, decorative Dahlias are ready to bloom which is about two weeks earlier than usual.

Bloomquist Gordon Dahlia

**FOOTNOTE:  Today I tackled edging the area I call "The Warf".  We have a few edges in our landscape that are two inch washed stone against grass.  These require edging every three to five years which is a lot better than shredded bark mulch which must be edged at least every year and some, twice a year. For the first couple of years you can neaten it up with a string trimmer, or just pull the quack grass and white clover away, but every once in awhile it needs a reset.  This was on my agenda but my husband pitched in because cutting edges along stone can be a beast.  It looks nice when you are done though.  The sod pulled up enough stone that we had to refresh that a bit.

And then since everything was done on either side, I cut the edge along the flagstone.

You can see the mud line along the stones where the grass had encroached.

Whew!