Moving Things

 It is finally getting to the time of year where I can move perennials around again.  The weather has been mild and we just got a good soaking rain.  Its time to start dealing with this blank slate.

The bed to the right had become quite crowded and was being used as a temporary storage place for a couple of things. Over the past couple of years, if I had something that I wasn't sure what to do with I would stick it there.  Some things worked and will stay.  Some things worked too well and outgrew their space.  I decided to start with the Peony which became too tall and wide to look right up front.  I will also be relocating the apple tree next to it and there was a Candytuft that was being crowded out so that came out too.

I put the Peony in front of the corner post which will come in handy of the Peony gets very tall and needs to be anchored to something, and the Candytuft went in front of a rock (to the left)

I also marked the center spot where I will put the apple tree and began working up the soil where I want to reseed the lawn.  Next year I will consider some low growing color for the front edges.  I call the area to the right "the spring garden" because there are a lot of Daffodils and Primrose and the Peony was also an early bloomer.  I usually plant Marigolds along the front to the left, but I want some perennial summer color in front of the green shrub backdrop on both sides.  That's just a whole lot of plain ole green.

The End of Sweet Corn

This week I picked the last dozen ears of sweet corn and froze it.  It held well on the stalk, but was beginning to lose a bit of its sweetness.  It was still very good, but more ordinary than what I like to put on the table as "corn on the cob".  I again got four dozen from one raised bed.  I had thinned the plants down to about 65 plants.  Some plants tried to produce a second ear but they were later and didn't amount to anything so I removed them from the plants.  There were also some plants that just didn't produce early enough and those ears (about a dozen) were late to the pollination game so I composted them as well.

You can see that these ears are quite mature.  We prefer them that way because the flavor is more developed.  The pollination was absolutely excellent.  We had eaten three dozen ears as corn on the cob, which was as much corn as we wanted for several weeks.  The husks on these was actually beginning to fade to tan.  Picked at the last minute.  This stage is perfect for cutting off the ears and went right into the freezer.  They say this variety, Gotta Have It, and sH2 super-sweet hybrid variety, retains its flavor in the refrigerator for three weeks.  That would have been an interesting experiment had my fridge not been full of cucumbers!  From Gurney's website:

Gotta Have It has tender kernels with a rich, oh-so-sweet flavor and an incredibly long shelf life – over 3 weeks when refrigerated in its husk! The kernels are slow to get starchy, and they retain their sweet flavor even when frozen. The flavor holds up for a wide range of maturity, so you have a longer window of harvest than with many other corn varieties. The 7-1/2 ft. tall plants are shorter than the average corn, but just as strong as field corn. If given enough room, it will produce up to 3 ears per stalk. It's a very productive variety.

I have heard that farmstand corn in our area is between 70 cents and a dollar an ear this year.  Here in my garden it certainly was a good year for sweet corn.

Dahlias and Annuals

August and September really are the most beautiful months for annual flowers.  We all start early and want them to look this amazing in May and June when gardening is fresh for the year and we are longing for some color.  But we have to wait.

I am beginning to start more of my annuals from seeds and it is so rewarding to know that these were the same tiny plants that were in the basement under lights early in spring.  So full of promise.

Century Mix Celosia
Started from Seed

 

Coleus Giant Exhibition Mix
Started from Seed

The dahlia bed is looking amazing.  There is an awful lot of deep green foliage in there.  One might think I went a little too heavy on the nitrogen.  But it is also full of buds and blooms.  They are just now hitting their stride.  I am also pleased to note that my care and planning to get the tallest plants in the center of the bed paid off.  The shorter varieties are on the outside where they can be fully enjoyed and not lost in the jungle.  I have eleven varieties in this bed blooming and three more varieties still to bloom.

Dahlias
with Super Hero Marigolds and Celosia (started from seed)

Summer's End

Peaches and Dreams

Cornell Bronze

Spartacus

Begonias started from tubers

Queeny Lime Red Zinnias and Madame Butterfly Bronze Snapdragons
Started from Seed

A pretty good showing, overall.

This is the time of year when there is not a lot to be done in the garden except enjoy the flowers and wait for frost.  There is a lot of work ahead when we clear everything out for winter.

But for now, we will just enjoy to show while it lasts.

One of those days

Very rarely I draw a complete blank on what to title a blog post.

This is one of those days.

The lettuce has done really well and last week I began using leaves for sandwiches. While lettuce needs consistent water I found earlier this year that the butterheads did not do well with a lot of direct water down in the leaves (rot), so each day when I water I take the shade cloth off and water between the plants with my water wand.  There is a volunteer cucumber in there.  I hate to pull it.

 

I am still covering the cantaloupes each night to keep them from cooling too much.  This has been a mild summer and we have already had night time temps in the low 50s,

I finally stripped all of the available beans off and have been freezing them.  I keep watering the plants because there are still some new beans developing at the top and I want to encourage the vines to keep trying.

The green beans are not easy to photograph on the vine.  But they're in there!

I usually pick them slimmer than this but wow, they look awesome.  And they are not tough or stringy.

Another thing that is difficult to photograph is a territorial bird.  The hummingbirds have been very active this week, and now we have finches.

I'm a pepper, he's a pepper...wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?

The gold finches have been working on the sunflowers.  There are sometimes as many as three brightly colored males maneuvering around trying to claim the food source for themselves.  In the mean time the females eat in peace.

Always on the wing

The finches are quite shy and I have to sit quietly about thirty feet away, which does not make for dramatic photos.

The female is sitting on a flower on the right side of the picture.

Today I found a little powdery mildew on my zucchini plant.  I removed the affected leaves.  It will be a long time before it damages the overall health of the plant.

The vegetable garden is looking a little dry and weary, but there is still plenty of food in there.

I picked a few small cantaloupes yesterday.  They had slipped on their own but were small and ordinary.

The best is yet to come out of the melon patch.

Still tidy.

Being Watched By A Fox

We were sitting out on the deck today trying to block some of this persistent wind when we had a visitor.

The tall grass at the edge of the lawn was pretty good camouflage.

What she was really looking for was probably field mice.

But she was also a bit concerned about what we were up to.

Even 30 yards was a bit much for the cell phone zoom

She watched us for awhile. just a pair of ears in the grass

 

Then off home to her den.

Tidying Up

Yesterday I finally tore out the tired looking Cucumber vines and prepped the bed for next spring.

There were still a lot of nice cucumbers in there.

 

I had one volunteer potato plant

Which yielded enough to make a potato salad.

I have been eating tomatoes for weeks from two other tomato plants but my PaPaw's variety is about to bury me in tomato sandwiches.

Another Butterfly

 Today I finally caught the Viceroy butterfly on camera.  There were several butterflies today, all being very territorial about the flowers.  The Viceroy was the easiest to catch up to.  They are slightly smaller than a Monarch, but if you don't have both to compare one to the other, you can tell them apart by the black line across their back wings.

August

 The middle of August is generally the time when things begin to burn out and look awful.  That's not really the case this year.  We have had a rather cool summer with enough rain but not too much.  We are a little below average for precipitation.

The two beds of buckwheat cover crop came out two days ago.  I cut one and pulled the other.  There were too many weeds to ignore in the bare bed but I put the cut stalks in the compost bin.

The cucumber vines are tired but not dead.  They are not a all diseased.  Sometimes they get wilt and die over night. Sometimes they just sort of fade away.  I have left them because there are still a few good cucumbers in there that will be appreciated all the more at the end of the season.

The cantaloupe vines are also fading but if they didn't it would be impossible to find the fruit.

...more than two dozen melons.

I lift the oldest ones each day waiting for them to slip off the stem.

The Clarimore zucchini plant is looking as fresh as it did in June and producing a squash every couple of days.

The fall lettuce bed is growing well.

And now for some pretty flowers

My baby Sahara Rudbeckia that I started from seed this spring

Not bad for August

Freezing Beans

 This year has been a great year for beans.  Last year I decided I would never fiddle with bush beans again.  It's pole beans for me.  They keep on producing as the vines keep growing and you don't have to get down on the ground to pick 'em.

I have settled on two really good varieties. Monte Gusto and Seychelles.

I freeze my beans because I think canning is a lot of sweaty work.  I don't mind making pickles, but water bath canning or pressure cooker canning isn't any fun.  Freezing is simple and you can do it in small batches.  Have a handful of beans? (or peas or a few extra ears of corn?)  Pop them in the freezer.

Here are my steps for freezing beans.

Take the ends off the beans and chop them into bite size pieces.  Boil some water, take it off the heat, and throw the beans in for three minutes.

Strain the beans and have an ice bath ready.

Put the beans in the ice bath and leave them until the cubes melt.

Strain the beans again and spread the cooled beans on a tray and put them in the freezer for a day.  This means you have to keep your freezer organized well enough to be able to fit a tray in there.  When the beans are frozen solid, break them off of the tray and put them in bulk into a gallon bag.  It sometimes takes me three or four small batches to fill a gallon bag.  That's the beauty of freezing as opposed to canning.   It is simple and easy and can be done in small batches.  When you want to eat beans, get some water boiling, take a handful or two out of the bulk bag and boil for three minutes.

When I prepare fresh beans, I use a steamer and steam for ten minutes, but boiling frozen beans is almost as good.  Two gallons will get us through the winter just fine and by the time bean season rolls around again we will be out of frozen beans and wishing for the garden fresh version.