Sneaky Snake

 I wanted to share one of my garden friends with you.  This is Sneaky Snake.  He lives in a hole in the railroad tie right next to the horseradish.  Unless it is very hot out, I see him each day in the mid to late morning when he is sunning himself. I am not much of a snake person.  I won't handle them unless absolutely necessary, but I don't mind having them around a long as they don't surprise me.  Sneaky and I are used to each other and no one gets jumpy or nervous or moves quickly.  I am sure I could pick him up easily if I wanted to.  But I don't want to. I just get a kick out of his routine, and enjoy talking to him.  Today as I was walking back and forth and around the garden shed doing my chores, he assumed this position with his chin on the edge and just watched my comings and goings for almost an hour.

We'll Figure It Out By The Time We're Done

 We've had this old park bench for years.  We don't often sit in it, we just use it as garden art.  It has been in numerous spots in the landscape and has been sitting here at the end of the porch filling space since the Lilac Tree died and had to be removed.  

It makes sort of a nice backdrop for the flowers, but its sitting days were over because the wood was so rotten.  For the past couple of years I just set things on it, like a garden tool so I didn't forget to put it back etc.  My husband kept threatening to throw it out.  It wasn't very useful, but it would leave a big empty space....  I had sort of made up my mind that I would replace it with an inexpensive metal bench from a big box store.  One that wouldn't rot.  Ever.  But that seemed like the lazy way out, not to mention wasteful and I couldn't find anything I liked anyway.  Or at least nothing inexpensive (this one cost $7 at a yard sale).  

This spring, the seat board that the side-to-side stabilizer braces were screwed into broke loose.  It would no longer even stand up straight.  It leaned like the tower of Pisa.  Moving it to mulch or weed around it was like trying to relocated a fifty pound slinky.  Something was going to have to be done.  A decision made.  Action taken.  One day my husband must have got some inspiration from somewhere because, out of the blue, he asked me "do you want to help me tear apart that bench?".  Yup.  I do.  So, being of the mind set that if we know how to do it and have the tools and supplies, then we should do it.  We decided to renovate it.  And that is how we get ourselves into these little predicaments. 

We tore it apart, wire brushed and painted the ends, and my husband dug around in the scrap lumber pile until he found enough suitable black walnut boards leftover from another project to rip down to the right size.  All that sounds so easy but it's time consuming.  It didn't cost us anything but elbow grease.  And I suppose the scrubbing and the ripping and the sanding and the sealing was easy compared to putting that bugger back together.  The boards were measured and cut to length and precisely drilled so that we could just bolt it back together again.  But apparently, at the bench factory, either the wood is drilled to fit each hole in the iron channel, or they just made the holes really big to allow for adjustment.  Hard to say.  Whatever proper assembly procedure there is was eluding us.  After some trial and error we found that we had to start at the front and place each slat in order.  The thing acted like it was ticklish and kept trying to squirm out of alignment.  And we couldn't bolt the last few slats in until we had all of them in the channel.  Otherwise the last one wouldn't go in at all.  This was one of those projects that, as my husband likes to say, by the time we figure out how to do it right it will be all over.

But it sure looks nice, and it is STURDY.  I am so used to it being all wibbly-wobbly that I almost don't know what to do.    I can sit on it without getting filthy, or falling through, or collapsing it like a deck of cards.

It makes much better garden art now.  It almost looks like fine furniture.

Rustic was fine, but glossy is better.  It seems to say "come and have a seat.  Enjoy the garden."

I guess the hassle was worth it after all.

A Cool Pickle Day

 This week of July is typically the hottest week of the year for us.  And that's exactly when Pickle Day usually happens.  But today is rainy and cool with a breeze and right now, at 3:30 pm, it is only 62F (61C).  

We use the turkey fryer to process pickles so we can keep a lot of the steam outside, and we had to move the turkey fryer to the corner of the deck because the breeze kept blowing out the flame.

The turkey fryer basket holds seven pint jars which is perfect for the amount of pickles we eat each year.

I cut enough cucumbers to have two or three pints of refrigerator pickles and had brine left over which will keep for another week.  When I get more cucumbers, I will make a batch of dill pickles, and I will have the option of processing more bread and butter.

The refrigerator batches are my favorite.  They are so crisp because they have not been cooked and we have been out of sweet pickles for over a month now so these will go fast!

More Free Plants

 Next to the firepit planter there are some volunteer Celosia seeded from last year's plants.  No sense in having them go to waste.  If it were spring and temperatures were cooler, I may be able to transplant these directly from the gravel to the planter, but considering the hot weather, they will need to develop a better root system before they are on their own.

I yanked them out, breaking a lot of the hair roots in the process.

Put them in a cell tray of potting mix, and watered well.  They wilted fast, even in the shade.

Today they had perked back up.  I will wait a few weeks for them to develop a new root system, then wait for a few cooler or rainy days to add them to the firepit planter.

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.