Early August Status Report

 The first tomato of the season is taking its sweet time.  The plants themselves are looking amazing and they are covered in fruit.  This year I got the pairings exactly right.  Two on the left are the super vigorous varieties that are much like Brandywine, Elsie's Amish Tomato and the Barlow Tomato.  Two in the middle are the black Paul Robeson and Carbon.  Two on the right are Sun Sugar Cherry and Adelaide Festival Dwarf.

The Barlow tomato first spotted on June 23rd is just starting to change.

The Sweet Corn will also be ready any day.  I have been feeling the ear tips but I haven't gotten anxious enough to start peaking inside yet.

I am seeing some good sized ears in here.  There should be as much as we want.

The pole beans are climbing and starting to produce.  They really stalled out there in the heat wave because I did not have them mulched and the Marigolds weren't big enough to properly shade their roots.  The vines are really healthy and should produce well for many weeks to come.

It is proving to be a stellar year for Peppers.

The plants are LOADED with Peppers.

Now that I have more than enough pickles made, it is time to pull the tired out Cucumber vines.  The vines are still flowering well but not setting fruit.

I remove all of the pickling vines but left the two slicer vines because they had some nice cucumbers still developing on them.

My refrigerator is full from these two vines, and the cukes should last for weeks still.

The Blackberries will be ready soon.  Below is the first clump of berries but there are many more behind that.  I have hoops set up and I am ready to throw some insect netting over them to keep the birds from stealing my berries.  I am not willing to share these first precious fruit.

That pretty much covers the food coming out of the vegetable garden.  I would like to show off the Tiara Blue Supertunias that Romence Gardens shipped my by mistake.  I wasn't in love with them when  planted them but they are really growing on me.

The white Marigolds are in a bit of a lull right now but are covered in buds.

My annuals should continue looking beautiful all through August

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.

Beans, Peas, Tomatoes

 Today I uncovered the second planting of pole beans and installed the trellis that they climb.  This stackable, expandable "pea fence" from Gardeners is a pain in the neck to set up but it works great.

I used to grow Wando peas on it because those crazy peas would just keep on growing until they outgrew the five foot fence and I was using a step ladder to harvest them.  I used to make bean teepees out of bamboo or conduit until I found that the bean plants would much rather climb this pea trellis

I am pretty sure I have confirmed that the culprit that was eating the bean leaves just as soon as they developed was the little brown locusts.  They are shy and elusive, but some of them were sitting on top of the row cover wishing they were inside destroying my crop before it grew.  They will be happy to eat the leaves now that they are uncovered, but the plants will outgrow the damage.  It is the beginning stage when all that is available to eat is the little growth tip that the bean plants are most vulnerable. I tried to get a good photo but they are classic "no-see-ums"

Anyway, the bean plants are doing well now and they will soon begin to climb up the wire fence.

I am pretty happy with my Durango Marigolds that I seeded indoors the first of May.  I have been growing this mix for years to fill in spots around the garden.  I dislike the Tangerine color of all  Marigolds so much (and they seem to be most prolific) that I buy the color sorted seed so that I only get the Yellow, Red and Bolero  colors.

Durango Bolero

I am counting the days until my Penelope Peas are ready to start harvesting.  I have sampled a few but they are not quite big enough to make a good harvest yet.  I planted four thick rows because I need to restock my seed inventory.  I have been saving my own pea seeds for five seasons now.

They are heavily loaded with pods.

The Tomatoes are also setting fruit.

My Orange Hat Micro Tomatoes are just turning,

I replated the Sweet Potatoes after the Racoon destroyed them.  One of the missing plants has reappeared.  See that little guy?  It really wants to live,

My Strawberries are still producing.  I have enough batches of freezer jam put away to last the year, and a few berries just in the freezer for miscellaneous uses.  These are for snacking.  They are so sweet!

It seems that I spend as much time and money (and brain power) in defeating the deer as any other thing in the garden.  The deer have been coming through, trimming the lower leaves off of the apple tree and then cutting through the Dahlia bed.  Hey! You don't need to be in there!

I drove some conduit in the corners and clipped some bird netting in a band around the Dahlia bed.  I didn't unroll it completely because all I need is a barrier to divert them around the bed and I am tired of trying to fold that stuff up after I use it.

While I was at it I expanded and re-netted the net room around the pear tree which has to stay on all year around until the pear tree improves in shape.  It is already filling out on the lower branches, but some of the branches were trying to push through the net and the deer nipped those off.  The shape is already beginning to improve.

And lastly the Triple Crown Blackberries that I planted last fall are blooming.  These only bloom on old wood, so only the two stems that each plant had on them last year when they arrived could produce berries this year.  I'll take it!