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, col 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.  Th 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

 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

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 250th Birthday America! .  Now I'm not saying I'm old, but I remember celebrating the BiCentennial.  As I have mentioned before, the Semiquincentennial was the inspiration for my annual flower choices this year and I am happy with how they turned out.

Maybe I should have gone ahead and added the white Petunias.  But I like them this way too.  I think it's worth not having to deadhead the white Petunias.  The red and purple ones hold up very well to the rain we've had.

The white Euphorbia has been swallowed up... but it's still in there.

The Supertunias out by the firepit are my favorite.  They are stunning.

They have filled out so much this week in the heat.

The Latte Supertunias are amazing.  In some promotional photos the veining is brown giving them a tan appearance, but these are more black (deep purple) and white which what I was hoping for.  I will probably plant this combination again.

I always buy some spare plants, especially when mail ordering.  That way I can choose the best plants and nurse the rest back to health. The extras went around the Pear tree, circled by the Vanilla Cream Marigolds.

I planned to keep the Pear tree watered better this year hoping for larger pears and having annuals at its feet is a good incentive to remember to water regularly.

Romence Gardens made a mistake when they shipped my order and they sent Tiara Blue Supertunias instead of the Royal Velvet that I wanted to use in the firepit pots.  The more purple tone would not have looked good in that combination so I planted the Tiara Blue along the edge of another area, alternated with the Vanilla Cream Marigolds.  I had planned for the Marigolds because this part of the landscape looks so empty in the summer after the daffodils are gone.  Next year I will also plan for Supertunias, but maybe not this color.  The purple does look appropriate over here though and the white center makes them more visible from a distance. 

They accentuate the purple Clematis Vine in the background.

My Dahlias are on the verge of blooming, which is fairly early for Dahlias.  I am really enjoying the Zinnias and Marigolds.  I will definitely do this again.

The direct sown Celosia are beginning to bloom.  There are about two dozen smaller plants in and around these large ones that are catching up fast.

This last photo is not an annual, but it is having a moment worth appreciating.  Echinacea Cantaloupe and the purple Clematis vine.  The centers of this Echinacea puff out and look like orange pompons and the color deepens to a rich cantaloupe.  But by that time the Clematis will be past its prime.

So those are the results of my annual flower choices.  Its something I plan for as much as a year in advance and spend months growing, buying and setting out plants.  Now I can just enjoy them for a few months.

Heat Wave

 This is day three in a row of 100ish degrees. (37 C) And that thermometer is in the shade on the north side of the garden shed.  It is 90 in the shade of the front porch, and over 100 in the garden. Plus it is windy which is making it feel like a blast furnace.  Two days ago we had decent cloud cover which stopped things from roasting in the sun, but yesterday and today have been clear and sunny.

In heat like this, things are going to wilt.  Below are the two zucchini plants that I transplanted earlier in the week knowing I would not be able to keep them watered in their black gallon pots.  The one that I transplanted a week earlier is just fine because it has rooted in.  The plant on the left is in leaf mulch that I put down for the cucumbers and the one on the right is in bare soil.

I put mulch around the second one yesterday afternoon to see if it would make a difference.  Just a little bit.  Watering them at that point would not help because the soil was already damp and they can't take it up any quicker than they have been.  I stick to my regular watering schedule but check container plants in the afternoon to make sure that they had enough water to get through the day.  Providing the squash with a little shade would help them.

They are just fine in the morning.

I mulched around the roots of the tomato plants to keep the soil cooler.

I also put a shade cloth over them to give them a break from the afternoon sun.  They are flowering heavily right now and extreme heat and humidity can kill pollen and prevent fruit from setting.

I picked peas in the early morning while they were still fresh from cooler night time temps.  I planted a lot of peas this year because I was getting low on seed peas.  The past two years I only planted two rows which is enough to eat but doesn't leave much to save.  So I was still planting seeds saved in 2022 and 2023.  I planted every last seed I had and intend to save enough seed for a couple of years.  When I pull the peas plants I gather whatever dried pods are on the inside or low on the plants and got missed in the harvest.  This year, because I have plenty, I want to save some of the nicer, large pods for seed.  Which means I am simply leaving some of them on the vine.  Once the pods start to dry they get a textured feel to them.  They will have lost their sweetness.  These will be the ones I pick later and lay out to dry.

I am still picking a little from the first row planted April 1st, mostly from the second row planted a week later and just starting on the third row.  The fourth row is not ready yet.  There are a lot of peas.

Row #3

I have most of what I want to freeze already processed.

The Sweet Corn is visibly growing each day.  It loves the heat.

In preparation for the heat, I did relocate this pot of Begonias into a cooler spot. 

That's about all you can do in a heat wave.  Give things a little extra care and wait for it to break.  Next week we should be back to average weather.