Maintenance

 I have finally dug out all of the 18 daylilies slated for removal and refilled the empty holes with top soil.  In some cases I have already placed a plant, others will wait until next year.

I want to use at least one division of these Black Eyed Susans.

Mother plant

I last divided them in 2024 and they need it again.

First division from 2024

I am chucking annuals that are not making me happy.  This Gallery Art Deco Dahlia has petered out.

I replaced it with a Masquerade Ornamental Hot Pepper.

I am still working raking out on that bed full of Purslane.  This is round three.

My slicing Cucumbers (Gateway)  are still going strong.

(it was wet and rainy this morning)

One almost got away.

My second grapevine is starting to put out side shoots that look like they will make good cordons.

...so that has been my day.  Sweet Corn for supper again.

Summer Rains

 We have entered a rainy period which is fine.  It cuts down on worry about how the plants are coping with high heat and turns your focus to tidying up every day.  I just cleaned these Petunia planters up yesterday morning.

That's the thing about traditional Petunias.  They don't handle rain well.  The deep purple blooms shed water and seem to hold up the best, especially the first couple of days.

The red ones - not so much.

At least they aren't white, which would be translucent and ultra icky.  No matter.  They need to be dead headed anyway so they don't set seed and quit blooming.  I just have to wait for the plant to dry out a little.  You ought to see my fingers after 10 minutes of Petunia trimming.  Thankfully, Hydrangea flowers don't do that.  

Little Lime Punch Hydrangea (planted 2024)

Little Quick Fire Hydrangea (planted last month)

The thing about rain is that it gives all of the weeds a quick boost.  You will come out in the morning and an area which looked fine yesterday will have all of these happy little weeds.  Below is the pea bed that was mulched.  It won't take long to pull these weeds, especially with moist soil.

Eww!  This pea bed with no mulch is a different story!  Purslane!  The best way to deal with this is to pull the more mature plants at the far end and then rake over it with a garden rake uprooting all of those tiny babies.  I will leave the garden rake right there and every time I walk past I will take 30 seconds to rake it again so that the roots dry up and die.  A nice hot, sunny afternoon would help cook them.

Here is a little update on the grape vines.  The first one is growing like crazy.  It has a really nice growth habit that will easily lend itself to a multiple vertical cordon style.

In the spring, I will prune it as diagramed below.

Right now I am just making sure I tie up the stems that I want to turn into cordons so they are protected and will harden into the form I want.

The second vine has one main leader.

It may require a different form just because it fits this particular vine's growth habit.  Maybe next year's growth will provide what I need for two opposing cordons.   We shall see.  It's kind of fun.

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.

Puttering

 Today I worked on getting a few more odds and ends out of the cold frame.  The first was the late seeding of the Candy onions.  First they got a haircut.  My camera wasn't sure what we were looking at.

Then I popped them out and shook most of the soil out of the roots.

I trimmed back the roots too.  Then you just get a pencil, poke a hole in the soil, stick the onion in there about half an inch deep and water them in.

I had a few spare Marigolds after planting the pole bean bed.  I just walked around planting them in any bare spot left by trimmed Daffodils or whatever.  I protected them with wire cloches until they can root in.  I planted four and still have two more to find spots for.

Here are a couple of updates.  The bigger grape vine is already tall enough to start training along the cables in each direction.

The replacement vine has some catching up to do but it is growing fine.

The combination pots near the fire pit are looking "decadent" just like the name of the Proven Winners recipe.  It is curious to note that the Black Cherry Supertunias are putting out a few blooms that are a different red.

The ones under the Pear tree are doing something similar.  That is something a hybridizer would consider a flaw and a sign of an unstable strain, but when I get variations like this in my garden they always seem just a little prettier than the rest of the mill plants.

Cool Weather

 This growing season has been a challenge because of cool weather, especially at night.  Today's forecast high is 59F (15C) and that will be brief.  Tonight's low will be 48F (9C) and there are several things in the garden now that do NOT like to be velow 55F.   It is very overcast.  We got a wonderful drenching rain yesterday evening which was much appreciated, and now the rest of the week will be cool but mostly sunny.  

I still have my sweet potato vines covered because of the night time temperatures.  The first batch planted in May, gave it up pretty quickly.  I didn't cover those because I was being stubborn.  Their leaves dropped off pretty quick, despite being hardened to the sun, but the stems remained green and I thought maybe they were rooting in under the soil.  But then one night a racoon climbed the fence and rummaged through the entire grow bag.  I only found two of the five stems and they were not so good looking.  After that the electric fence went on.  I replanted (always save backups!) and covered them and they are doing well.

Looking a little pale and shivery this morning, but putting out new leaves.

Another do over was the sweet corn.  I had great germination from the replant so I must have gotten the seeds too deep the first time.  I planted the second batch with a marked dibber so I got them exactly 1.5" deep.

Third replant of the day:  the grape vine.  My Dad told me that he tried growing grapes and they "died back then came back up and the grapes were awful".  Yup, his must have come up from root stock also.  This one is safely growing above the graft.

My first Dahlia bloom of the season.  This is a border height (2 foot) Dahlia which reach mature height and bloom much earlier.  I need more of these for annuals.  A few years ago I planted Pablo in front of the house but all of the tubers had leafy gall so I tossed them.  I had planted Geraniums in that area several years in a row so the leafy gall was probably in that soil.  Next year I'll try Pablo again in a different area.  Border Dahlias are a pretty efficient way of getting annual color and not spending a fortune year after year.

Border Dahlia Art Deco