Early July Vegetable Update

 I like to go through about twice a month and just take photos of each raised bed so i can compare year to year.  This year's garden is feeling pretty good... that is until Facebook popped a photo of mounds of colorful, blooming Nasturtium from a few years ago.  Okay, my Nasturtium are still tiny this year.  But overall, this is one of my best tended gardens and the list of things to change next year is very, very short.

The peas came out yesterday.  They were still green and beautiful, but completely picked clean.  The best part was - not a weed to be seen.

That bed has now had mulch added, the open pollinated Dahlias from seed I saved last year are transplanted and the other end is set up for a later planting of Cucumbers which are seeded in cells.  The Dahlias were starting to suffer, and their little tubers were poking through the drain holes, but they will turn around quickly.

Here are the rest of the beds one by one:

Pickling Cucumbers and Slicing Cucumbers
I am going to keep these from mingling in the center so when the pickles have been made, the vines can come out.

From the other side.  They are flowering, and will soon be shading the Celery

Solstice Sweet Corn planted May 20th

Gotta Have It planted June 1st

Clarimore and Dunja Zucchini together
It took about three tries and a dozen seeds but I finally got a Dunja plant.

Cantaloupe and Pumpkin

Cole Crops

Cauliflower

Golden Acre Cabbage

Indeterminate Tomatoes

Carbon babies

Bell Peppers full of buds

Potted Bells

Havasu Peppers

Havasu Baby

Sweet Potatoes, Carrots and Herbs
I have been pulling a lot of carrots

Dill, Sunflowers, Sweet Potatoes and Eggplant

Sunflowers soon

The Pole Bean bed still looks ragged, but things are good in there

First seeding of Seychelles is climbing

Dwarf Tomatoes and Onions

I am still learning about this growing Onions from seed thing.
The one in the middle is one of mine, and the larger on each side are the nursery grown Candy Onions

Dwarf Tomatoes

Setting fruit

Micro Tomato

I am proud of this Eggplant.  These are the two spare plants I hid on top of the potting bench which ended up rallying and out growing the other pair I had in a larger pot.  I have switched the pots now so the larger plants are in the larger pot.  Not long ago Aphids found these and I spent about a week spraying with Neem Oil every morning.  Now I am getting an occasional flea beetle but the Aphids are finally gone.  I wrote at length in this blog entry about my love of soft, blemish free Eggplant leaves.

Yukon Gold Potatoes
I dug a plant the other day and they are beautiful and scab free.  Iron-tone (with a 17% sulfur content) seems to have done the trick on that.

Looks Good Enough to Eat

The Battle for the Buds is going well this year.  All of the Coneflowers and Deerlilies Daylilies are beginning to bloom.  They are all fresh and delicate and yummy looking.

Prima Ginger Echinacea

This is when they are at their most vulnerable to deer.

I can understand why they are appealing.  When the Daylily buds are at this stage it looks like a candy store.  Those buds must just pop in your mouth like a gumdrop.  I can see the allure.  If I had been browsing on twigs all day, the sight of dewy, fresh, poppable buds would be mouth watering.

Happy Returns Daylily

Every morning when I open the drapes and look out my bedroom window and see all of these yellow Lilies and white Daisies still intact it puts a smile on my face.

It makes all of the work worthwhile. 

And it still requires work.  Removing all of the orange lilies along the front fence was a huge step in the right direction.  Not only does it save me time and money, but it was a huge attraction to bring the deer through in the first place.  Next I have made some pretty good strides in protecting the plants I want to keep with netting.  I still have plants in tempting locations (below).

These plants have suffered a little damage here and there.

Empty Stems

Even though they are netted, I still spray with Repels-All after every rain.  This makes them smell less like food.  I spray pretty much everything, including shrubs and annuals.  Every evening, the last thing I do in the garden is walk through with a bottle of Bonide Hot Pepper Wax and give the most vulnerable blooms a light spritz, especially nearest the spots I walk by every day and want to enjoy the blooms.  Also, the flowers along the edges of the netting and anything that looks like it will open in the morning.

This way if the deer do munch on those, they will get the most unpleasant taste I can muster and move on.

I have to say that the Daylilies have never looked better.  Plants that never had a chance before are absolutely full of buds.

Of course Daylilies and Coneflowers are not the only thing that looks appetizing.  I have to be protective of the Clematis vines.  Those are full of delicate buds and fragrant flowers too.

In the vegetable garden, I picked a gallon of peas.  This is the second and largest picking for this crop.  There are still peas coming but not in this volume.  By the time I got them all shelled my thumbs were sore!  I had to use the big pot to blanch them.  I freeze them in pint bags for individual meals. 

Prepping for Heat

 I got up and out early this morning to make sure the garden was well watered to deal with this heat wave we're getting.  Three days in a row it is supposed to be flirting with 90F.  By 9:30 am it hit 86F and it stayed there most of the day but now the official temp in our town is 89F.  So in two days we have gone up 20 degrees.  It feels like the Carolinas out there.  Very thick and tropical. 65% humidity.  And it is not supposed to cool down as much at night.  Its going to be sticky.

9:30 am in full shade

Tomatoes don't really like heat like that.  Anything over 85F can sterilize the pollen and then you don't get fruit set.  Most of my plants are right at the point of flowering.

So I used the shade cloth that I have on hand.  The Indeterminate tomatoes with their tall T-post supports had to settle for shade from the late afternoon sun.

It won't be long now and we will see some progress.

The peas are huge because of all of the cool, rainy weather.  They are about five feet tall.  I watered them well and this shade cloth set up should at least give them a bit of a break from the mid-day sun.

The sweet corn got sorted out and tidied up.  This heat will make it grow so much faster.

The Cabbage Patch looks amazing.  There aren't even any slugs in there though I should probably apply some slug bait in there anyway now that I've thought of it.

The cabbages are forming heads and soon I will start picking small heads for cole slaw.

And three out of four broccoli plants are showing heads.

I puttered along doggedly, working slowly, to get at least a little something accomplished.  I was so tired of looking at this shaggy mess with the flopped over daffodils.

I put in three of the Heuchera that I removed from the Whiskey barrels.  I still have a tray of annuals to plant along the front but I was ready to be done.

Heuchera do really well in the soil of this bed.  Below is a gorgeous one that I planted a couple of years ago just around the corner.

And with the last energy I had left, I hauled the hammock frame out and set that up.  We have had quite a stiff breeze all day and the shade of the Maple tree was cool and comfortable.  It is easy to see why people in tropical areas use these.  The breeze comes up under you and cools you from every direction.

And tomorrow we are going to get the same weather.