It's Cuddle Weather

 We had our first light frost this morning which is almost two weeks early.  Finally the gloom has cleared and we are enjoying brilliant sunny days with highs lower than 70F (21C).

It wasn't a hard frost, just touched the roofs and fences.  The garden thermometer DID say 32F though.  

We are ready for Autumn.  All of the perennials and grasses have been cut back.  Most of the annuals have been pulled.  The vegetable garden is mostly cleaned out.  I do have a nice crop of peas coming.  They can handle some cold weather so we will still be able to harvest what is just filling out now.

I have a Sun Sugar cherry tomato plant going strong.  I snack on these all day and I had been keeping up with the plant until about a week ago when it got ahead of me.

The Pole Beans were still looking beautiful yesterday before I pulled them out.  The beans that were left were pretty tough and mature.  I picked a few that are waiting in the fridge but we got all that we needed from them this year.

And there are the Sweet Potatoes.  They will be harvested next week.

There are still a few pretty flowers here and there.

The Dahlias are just hitting their stride.  Below are the singles.  They are extremely popular with the bees right now.  My main garden chore each day is deadheading Dahlias.  The six (out of fourteen) Bee's Choice singles that I overwintered and planted again this year are growing monster plants and blooming well.    I numbered them and #2504 (which I called Cosmic Red) and #2510 (which I called Lavender Teacup) are out in the landscape beds, five feet tall, and blooming very well. 

This year I grew out a few more "Bee's Choice" seeds from the ball and decorative Dahlias.  Out of the tray I started, I only ended up planting out four transplants due to space constraints.  Out of those only one plant is still thriving.  It is an offspring of Bloomquist Gordan and it is a very bushy plant with many buds on it.  This is the first flower to open.  It is pretty impossible to guess what lighter colored variety it is crossed with.  There are several possibilities.  Maybe one of the other blooms will give a clue.  I really like it.  I'll save it for next year and see if it continues to thrive.  

Offspring of BQ Gordon

BQ Gordon

My Dahlias will take quite a bit of frost before they start to go dormant and need to be stored.  That is the last garden chore of the year.

Late Summer Odds n' Ends

 I have been enjoying making plans for the Iris flower bed and looking forward to flowers next year.

I have been checking on the rhizomes, taking the cloches off and giving them a little tug and they are rooting in very well.   I can see that some of the leaves are beginning to grow again.  

The internet has been bombarding me with photos of beautiful irises.  I had a little room left and no red toned bi-colors, so I ordered a few more for the center of the bed.

I took Coleus cuttings today.  I plan to take another round when these root and are transplanted.  I can keep cutting until frost and fill a tray.  I elected to use water tubes instead of the potting medium because I can easily monitor the root growth.

I also have some fall lettuce seeded.

I have both "protected" with trays that give them a little filtering of the direct sun.

A little over a month ago, when I was drying and packeting pea seeds, I planted out some of the extras.  Just 50 seeds as an experiment.  Boy they grow differently in warm weather.  I already have blooms.

Some beautiful, bright Celosia.

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.

Heat Wave

 This is day three in a row of 100ish degrees. (37 C) And that thermometer is in the shade on the north side of the garden shed.  It is 90 in the shade of the front porch, and over 100 in the garden. Plus it is windy which is making it feel like a blast furnace.  Two days ago we had decent cloud cover which stopped things from roasting in the sun, but yesterday and today have been clear and sunny.

In heat like this, things are going to wilt.  Below are the two zucchini plants that I transplanted earlier in the week knowing I would not be able to keep them watered in their black gallon pots.  The one that I transplanted a week earlier is just fine because it has rooted in.  The plant on the left is in leaf mulch that I put down for the cucumbers and the one on the right is in bare soil.

I put mulch around the second one yesterday afternoon to see if it would make a difference.  Just a little bit.  Watering them at that point would not help because the soil was already damp and they can't take it up any quicker than they have been.  I stick to my regular watering schedule but check container plants in the afternoon to make sure that they had enough water to get through the day.  Providing the squash with a little shade would help them.

They are just fine in the morning.

I mulched around the roots of the tomato plants to keep the soil cooler.

I also put a shade cloth over them to give them a break from the afternoon sun.  They are flowering heavily right now and extreme heat and humidity can kill pollen and prevent fruit from setting.

I picked peas in the early morning while they were still fresh from cooler night time temps.  I planted a lot of peas this year because I was getting low on seed peas.  The past two years I only planted two rows which is enough to eat but doesn't leave much to save.  So I was still planting seeds saved in 2022 and 2023.  I planted every last seed I had and intend to save enough seed for a couple of years.  When I pull the peas plants I gather whatever dried pods are on the inside or low on the plants and got missed in the harvest.  This year, because I have plenty, I want to save some of the nicer, large pods for seed.  Which means I am simply leaving some of them on the vine.  Once the pods start to dry they get a textured feel to them.  They will have lost their sweetness.  These will be the ones I pick later and lay out to dry.

I am still picking a little from the first row planted April 1st, mostly from the second row planted a week later and just starting on the third row.  The fourth row is not ready yet.  There are a lot of peas.

Row #3

I have most of what I want to freeze already processed.

The Sweet Corn is visibly growing each day.  It loves the heat.

In preparation for the heat, I did relocate this pot of Begonias into a cooler spot. 

That's about all you can do in a heat wave.  Give things a little extra care and wait for it to break.  Next week we should be back to average weather.