Pinch Me

I mentioned in one of my recent posts that my annuals are getting a bit tired.  July is the time when things begin to get a little over grown and lanky.  The first push of blooms is done and the plant may be covered in seed pods.  Having achieved its purpose, it may just give up and die.

  Heat or excessive rain will also take it's toll, as will pests.  Now if you are super organized and ambitious, you could replace the spent plants with fresh backups you've been coddling in the wings.  Or, you can do some maintenance.  It gets to the point where you can't make it look any worse, so just go in there and cut.

Last week this planter full of Nasturtium was yellowing and fading.
 I considered dumping out and replacing it

You can do this with surgical precision, taking just a little bit off the ends.  Or you can take drastic measures and whack them off at the knees.

A dose of fertilizer and a trim and this week the plant has
perked up and put out some fresh new growth an blooms

Black Aphids

If you have pests, it is best to take drastic measures, cut as much out as you can, and destroy the infected foliage or wrap it up and put it in the garbage.  Don't try composting it and don't cross contaminate it with your healthy plants.  

One week you are perky and in your prime

And a week later you are worn out and bedraggled

Some things should be pinched back right when they are planted.  Often, a pack of annuals will have one or more weedy inferior plant.  I pinch these way back, re-pot them in a gallon pot and store them in the garden where they will catch up and be available to replace failed plantings or add color to an area where the perennials are past their bloom time.

This row of Portulaca was looking pretty pitiful before I pinched it

Sometimes the whole pack of plants is a bit too weedy and lanky.  This year I bought Portulaca from two different sources.  The first variety was Sunseeker and a week later I saw some really nice Happy Hour and I decided I need more.  When I planted the Happy Hours, they immediately made the Sunseekers look like crap by comparison.  I carefully pinched back all the Sun Seeker plants to the point of new growth,  They were left as tiny little nubs that pretty much disappeared into the background.  And now they are bushy, compact and blooming almost as prolifically as the Happy Hours.  

I love Portulaca.  I never plant enough.  The blooms are so iridescent and intensely colorful.  Because they have succulent leaves, they withstand heat and dryness.  And they volunteer.  I am always finding cheerful little Portulaca volunteers popping up in odd corners.  Maybe next year I will plant them in large groups instead if neat little soldier rows.

This plant started out with three long bare stems and hardly
 any leaves and now it is round and full of buds.

But not everything is tired out and needing maintenance.  The Coleus are looking great.  They will begin to bloom now, and if I want them to stay compact and bushy I will need to pinch back the growing tips to prevent the tall blooms from forming.  Coleus is grown for its lovely foliage, not its sparse spikey flowers

Japanese Beetles

This year is a comparatively bad year for Japanese Beetles.  Not catastrophic by any means, but fairly annoying.  Over the years we've put down Milky Spore over pretty much the whole property which has cut down a lot over the years.  These days they concentrate around the porcelain vine next to the side door.  It's sort of like a beetle round-up.  They don't bother the beans and rarely even the raspberries but they still love this vine.  I keep a Bag-A-Bug nearby which draws them to that side of the house and then they spot the party vine!

This is what a Beetle Party looks like

This makes them sitting ducks.  Every day I collect them up in a cup of soapy water.  It's easier to catch them in the morning when they are cold and dewy and sluggish.

In five minutes I can clean the vine of 4 or 5 dozen beetles.  A few will startle and decamp but if I wait 5 or 10 minutes they'll be back.  There's not much fun stuff to do away from the party vine.

I put Castile soap in the water which kills them almost immediately.  

I leave them for a bit then I pour it out on the pavers of the compost area and crush them with a shovel to make sure they're very dead.  Beetles are controllable but like most pests, you have to do it every day every year to keep them in check.  You are never really rid of them.

The Ups and Downs of Home Improvement

The two car garage is up in the air and scheduled to come down in a matter of days.

This has been a matter of great discussion in the neighborhood.
Our elder statesman stops by each evening to check on the progress.

 I won't do a play by play of all the ridiculous challenges we've faced getting this thing up in the air and the walls poured, because I think at some point, my husband would prefer to forget the pain of childbirth and just enjoy the results.  No Amish were killed in the raising of this garage, although one came close (twice)  Thank you GFCI!  Amish and electric just don't mix.

After the garage is set back down, the center "post" will be removed and the two narrow doors will be replaced with one wide door.  This will require relocating the electric panel around to the side and jack-hammering out the floor and replacing it with a new floor.  Then, a drain line must be dug to take gutter water away.  Which brings us to project #2, which is the house foundation.

For weeks now one wall of the office has been held up by a bottle jack.  Which, honestly, is a lot more than was holding it up before.  The dry fit blocks will be replaced with poured concrete.  And if possible, a sort of dry well under the new deck will be created allowing access to the crawlspace through a mini-door.  But that is contingent on the amount of fall (grade) we have from here to the woods behind the garage.  Because the "dry well" will not be very dry unless we put a drainline in. The house sat about a foot higher than the garage as it was.  Now we've elevated the garage over a foot but the surrounding surface still slopes away from the house.  Although we have not gotten the transit out yet, it looks like there is plenty of slope.

Then we will be replacing our side steps with a nice wide deck and some decent landscaping.  Because right now it's a construction zone.

So what is happening in the garden?  We are in the heat of July, which isn't all that hot this year.  Regardless, some of my decorative annuals are past their prime and looking tired, but other things, like the Portulaca, are just coming into their prime.  It is hard to get rid of something that is past it's season.  I've found if you cut them back and ignore them for awhile, you may get a second season in the fall.

My garden routine every evening is this:
 Water any wilty pots.  I cut out over half a dozen container plantings for just this reason.
 Kill 5 dozen Japanese Beetles.  At least.
 Pick up the windfall apples so the deer won't have a reason to stop by
 Do at least one chore that is bothering me most

These day lillies are doing their best to dress up our side entrance

No matter what routine I have in the garden, there will always be one thing that is picking at my brain.  Something that needs to be done but I don't want to do.  I make myself do one thing each evening.  It may be grubbing the purslane out of the beans, trimming the dead stems on the tiger lillies, or harvesting a tub of potatoes.  But one dirty sweaty chore must be done every day.  I save really big jobs like renovating the strawberries for weekends.  I can't spend every evening just strolling around with a glass of wine picking dried lily blossoms.

Change Over

July 9th, the last of the peas and lettuce came out and the bush beans and second planting of cucumbers went in.

Baby Marketmore cucumbers

The cucumbers are doing awesome this year and I'm pretty proud of them.  I've been snipping off any poorly pollinated or curled fruit leaving the plants to put more energy into the nice ones.

The first cucumbers and a new row of bush beans

I love cucumber season.  

The tomatoes are doing well.  It feels a little weird not to allow the jungle to take over.

Very orderly tomato plants around the monster zucchini.
 Fruit the size of cherries

Celebrity Tomatoes now about the size of baseballs

  This is a good year for apples.  The tree kept over 30 fruit this year.  Today I bagged them and removed five inferior or damaged apples.  And oops, knocked one nice one off in the process of bagging.  I watched several YouTube videos on it and went with zip lock plastic bags instead of paper.  This is to keep insect damage to a minimum.  But actually, I'm hoping they just turn out cleaner than usually.  Our rain carries so much dirt with it, by harvest time the apples will be grey.  Also, it should discourage the deer from trying to pick them and knocking them down.  This Northern Spy is about as deer-proof as you can get.  Now and then I will find a fallen apple with all kinds of tooth marks on it, but they are evidently too hard to chew.

A previous year's harvest.  See what I mean about the dirt?  That grey all rubs off.
That is also the color our white shed doors always turned.

Once they're bagged, it is easier to see how many there are.  I bagged 25 and there are two, maybe three, I did not get bagged because I ran out of bags.   If there is a brand name on the bag, or if you write on the bag with marker, that will block the sunlight and supposedly, you will get a pale mark on the apple.  So you could personalize apples if you wanted to.

The apples bagged with plastic zip bags

We are still enjoying Daylillies

The Dry Creek Bed

Last year's project "the Big Drain"

Supertunias

I've seen pictures of this pink color mixture of Supertunias on the web for a couple of years now.  I always do pink on the east side of the house, and nowhere else, so I go to great lengths to coordinate my pinks, especially the petunias and geraniums.  In years past I have, on impulse, purchased and planted something outside of my color palette (like orangey red) and it has always stuck out like a sore thumb.  Made worse by the fact that I am walking past it several times a day because it is right by the door!

When I first visited the mega-greenhouse in our area, I saw that they had this combination potted up in two sizes.  Big and Bigger.  And of course they looked wonderful.  But even if I paid the $$ for the potted up version, how would I get the potted plant home (won't fit in the trunk of my car for sure) and once home, how would I get that big root ball out of the pot and into my whiskey barrel without breaking the tender petunias?  Not worth the hassle.  So for the same price, I could by twice as many plants and pot them however I wanted.  Yes, I groped the potted plants and counted, by feel, the number of plants in each size pot.

Supertunias Vista Fuschia

The tag stated that this combination is Supertunia Vista Fuschia, Bubblegum and Silverberry.

How convenient.  A shopping list.

Supertunia Vista Bubblegum

The Mega-greenhouse had two colors, and Home Depot had the Silverberry.  And before I left the mega-greenhouse I was careful to take my pink petunias into the geranium house and get two pink geraniums which looked nice with these shades of pink.

Supertunia Vista Silverberry

Because not all pinks are created equal, and I assure you that in this half acre selection... there are more than a couple of pink geranium choices.  Salmon pink, lipstick pink, fuschia pink, medium pink, pale pink, pale pink with dark eyes...

The 4 main geranium houses at the mega-greenhouse

So now I have the plants I need to spruce up the driveway and doorstep.  This is my first year with Supertunias.  They are similar to the Wave varieties, but the blooms are a little smaller, and their expected overall spread is a little bigger.  Also, the blooms hold up well under rain/watering and they do not require deadheading.  They are produced from cuttings not seeds.  So the seed head thing is bred out of them.  And anyone who has spent an afternoon deadheading sticky petunias will appreciate the difference.

And this is my result:

A couple of weeks ago

Last Week

I do have other types of petunias scattered around.  Deep Red Wave along the chicken run.  Then your standard petunias in a purple palette in the barrel on the far west side.  That one doesn't have to coordinate with anything so I get to experiment with colors and varieties.

The Difference in Soil?

 Take a look at these two separate zucchini plantings.  These plants were all from the same seed pack, planted on the same day, transplanted on the same day.

Zucchini Bed A

Bed A is on the side hill where we originally grew potatoes.  We added soil to this area from the same top soil as we did Bed B.

Zucchini Bed B

 I have amended both beds with the same compost and amendments.

They both get full sun all day,  They are essentially in the same longitude in the garden area, about 40 feet apart.  They have been fed the same fertilizer at the same times.

Zucchini B

 And Zucchini B, just like last year, is a monster.

I think they like that particular bed.  I've done something different, and more right whatever it is. 

Supertunias

 Elsewhere in the garden, today was a beautiful day.

The Tomatoes with Nasturtium Ground Cover

The Tomatoes with Nasturtium Ground Cover

Happy Independence Day

Happy 4th of July

*Note:  I saw one of these flag holders in Pinterest and thought it would be fun to make.  I don't usually decorate much for the 4th.  I found out why they are not readily available on craft sites.  Even with a drill press getting those holes drilled at consistent angles turned out to be a couple's team building exercise!  But it turned out to our satisfaction.