Flower of the Day

 In high summer, when a lot of things are looking dry and tired (Daylilies), the Echinacea has time to shine.  These are quite orange when they first bloom, but after a few weeks they fade to an antique rose color.  

Prima Ginger Echinacea

End of July Vegetable Update ~ Too Many Everything

 A photo dump of everything in the garden today.  I am at the point of the harvest when I ask myself "what were you thinking?!?"  We need rain badly.  The rainwater tank still has water

Both plantings of Bristol cucumbers and celery
The celery in the pot has self blanched and I have newspaper wrapped around one of the others

Plenty of slicers for us and everybody else
I put together a crock of fermented dills today from the pickling cukes

Pole Beans

Seychelles producing well
The Monte Gusto yellows are still a little green to pick

Direct sown Durango Marigolds 
Such an orderly little row

Dwarf Tomatoes  Early Girl on left end
The dwarfs beat the Early Girls

If I have any complaint about these dwarf varieties it is that they produce large clumps of tomatoes on short stems close to the body of the plant.  Extracting them undamaged is akin to brain surgery.

The first Adelaide Festival fruit I picked was a whopping 15 ounces.
That is respectable for any tomato variety.  They are not all that large but all are nice sized

Beautiful and delicious

The broccoli have not put out any side shoots.  I am trying to keep the plants in good shape to try for cooler weather.

Two Early Jersey Cabbages left

A wall O' tomat-O
After I took pictures I drove two T-posts in the middle, one on each side
The Florida weave is working very well

Black Beauty

There is an abundance of HUGE tomatoes in there

I started picking before I remembered I should be taking pictures.  These are very productive little plants

Awesome peppers!

more Awesome peppers!
Some of these hot Havasu went in to flavor the dill pickles

Herb bed and Sweet Potato
Those white flowers are Feverfew.  The pollinators couldn't care less about them

Too Much Dill
and carrots and more sweet potatoes

The volunteer Cantaloupes
I promise that these have not been given a single drop of water or fertilizer

I went back and looked, and last year I planted both Napoli and Hannah  So technically, these melons will be a hybrid.  No telling yet how they will turn out.  Some are quite smooth and green

Others have a nice netting

Two Clarimore plants.  Way more zucchini than any neighborhood can use

Late planted Cue Ball Zucchini

The Snapdragons that I yanked out of the gravel are beginning to bloom

Toad in a Hole

Poop Deck Maintenance

As happens with many projects, you get one thing nicely refreshed and suddenly there are satellite projects that need to be addressed.  Yesterday it was Poop Deck Maintenance.  This is the area where I process my compost.  The Compost pile is almost always up against the Railroad Ties and this has rotted them out.  This... and the darn Viburnum roots.

The Poop Deck was constructed back in 2012 and it has held up very well.  In the corner, both second level ties were disintegrating, but the base ties below, and the cap ties were still OK.  We did have a couple of spare RR ties stored away for projects like this, and we had two ties that would work.
First you have to tear everything apart, and I was actually cleaning the house, so I did not arrive on scene until it was time to put things back together.  We propped the new ties above their designated spots, and then using the chainsaw, cut them to fit.

Two new corner ties.

And then all put back together.  It looks like nothing happened, but in reality it was eight hours of hot sweaty work with a lot of stinky creosote and some serious laundry generation.  Still to be done: drilling holes for new rerod and driving rods to pin the wall together.

The Palisade ~ Power Pole Project #2

pal·i·sade

/ˌpaləˈsād/

noun

1. a fence of wooden stakes or iron railings fixed in the ground, forming an enclosure or defense.

We spent all of March clearing the dead and dangerous trees out of the thicket along our west side beyond the garden.  This past week we created some separation between the native shrubs and the landscaped area at the end of the lawn.

This area has changed a lot in the past ten years.

2012

We started with a simple walkway across the lawn to the neighbor's driveway.

There were some sizeable trees along the edge.

We cut the grass very short and laid down mulch.

We added Myrtle as groundcover.

The mulched area butted up to "the Poop Deck" where I keep my compost.

Over the years we removed trees and added grasses and divisions of daylilies.  The deer use this as a thoroughfare to get to the thicket area.  There are always fresh hoofprints.  So the deer go in and the roots come out.  That is the problem with natural areas.  When they butt up to landscaped areas you have a constant battle on your hands to keep the weeds out of the loose and fertile soil.  I've blogged about this problem before.  Sometimes the area needs a complete reset.

The Deer Route

The Viburnum bushes spread by roots.  They are invasive and insidious. The Buttercup are almost as bad forming a strong net of crisscrossing roots.  Pulling one plant is no improvement.  There is always a root left to pickup where it left off.  Below is an example of how far one root can travel. 

 I hooked one sizeable Viburnum root that was coming out of the thicket, and by the time I got done pulling I had about thirty feet of root.  All branching from one source.

Along the roots there were nodes that were sending up shoots.  The baby bushes were easy to pull out, but there were always a dozen more sprouts below the surface waiting their turn.  Spraying did nothing.  Pulling was futile.

Six weeks of reweeding just waiting for their turn

When we were brainstorming the neighbor's retaining wall and found a source for used power poles, I told my husband that I had a spot where I could sure use a wall of power poles to hold something back.  After the retaining wall was finished we turned our attention to the problems at hand.  My husband's number one priority was to get rid of 18 feet of edging.  Step #1: dig a trench.

Step #2: Cut up a pole.

By the end of day one we had a little wall between the landscape bed and the lawn.  We can mulch right up to one side, and use the string trimmer on the lawn side.  Day two would be heading across the back.  The backhoe made short work of it.

It was easy digging since the bed was constructed of deep, screened topsoil and has been heavily mulched for several years.  Few serious roots has crossed over.  Mostly Poison Ivy which we had to spray weekly during the summer.  Beneath those Viburnum bushes is a thick carpet of poison ivy, and a lot of wild strawberry and Virginia Creeper.  All of those things are invasive and difficult to control.

When I proposed this project, my thought was to swoop the wall around...

"Around what?" my husband asked.  "Is there anything worth saving in there?"

No, not really.  Just a big Oak stump, a clump of Viburnum, and a crap-ton of Golden Rod, Aster, Buttercup and... you guessed it... Poison Ivy.  The Myrtle was doing its best to choke it out but it was fighting a loosing battle.

We spent the afternoon of Day #3 lopping, weeding, digging out Myrtle and assessing the problem.

Day #4 pulling stumps

lopping roots, bringing in fill for the holes and leveling

Day #5 was back to trenching and chain sawing

You couldn't plan it out this accurately.  The last pole dropped in with only a smidge to spare.  We'd rather be lucky than good.  We brought in "crusher run" gravel and tamped in each side.  That oughta keep the roots from invading!

And finally we added a layer of old shredded mulch.  This will keep things tidy until the weather is better for transplanting.  Then we will put down a final layer of mulch,

My plan is to divide up that large clump of Miscanthus Flame Grass that now looks out of place in the front.  First I'll continue the row of tall grass divisions along the back, alternating with lower Hameln Fountain Grass divisions and perhaps a few other varieties I have around.

There is enough depth to have a garden path down the center if I want.  I would like to have billowy grass contrasted with upright purple Sage and Salvia. Perhaps a dash of yellow like Coreopsis or Rudbeckia.  Anything that goes into this bed will have to be deer resistant and cut short in the fall so we can mulch and blow leaves across the bed into the thicket.  I dug and set aside several wheelbarrows full of the Myrtle.  It is in the shade and can be transplanted back in when we get some cloudy days.  Whew!  That was a week's work!