I Can Always Buy Water

 I have always said that given the choice between unrelenting heat and sun or rain I will take the unrelenting heat and sun because I can always buy water.  And that's where we are today.  It hasn't rained in a few weeks.  It has been 90 or close to it for days on end.  We have the AC on in the house.   There is no dew to speak of and I am watering most of the vegetables every morning.  And so, I have run my 500 gallon rainwater tank dry.  This means today was water tank maintenance day.  My husband has to get into the tank, scrape the sides and rinse out the sludge.  We have to take the opportunity to do this every time it runs down.  We didn't do that last year because I never got below half a tank.  The last time it was done was Solstice 2020.  We also replaced the leaky hose from the sump pump to the outlet so I should have a lot better water pressure.  Then we filled it up from the house spigot which will be reflected in this month's water bill.  But that doesn't happen very often and at least I have that option.

The garden is loving the sun and heat as long as I make sure it has plenty of water.

Cucumbers

Sweet Corn

Speaking of sweet corn.  Remember back on the 8th when I reseeded the second planting of sweet corn because I thought the birds got it?  I don't think it was birds after all.  I waited eight days and when nothing came up I went looking for my seeds again and found only fragments of the treated pink shells.  Total annihilation.  You know, its one thing to lose some or even most of a crop.  But every last one?  Twice?  I could only assume at that point that it was mice.  Well, blocking out mice is much more difficult than blocking out birds.  But I gave it a try.  I put the row cover down on the surface and pinned it down on the sides with both gravel and t-posts.  I put bricks across each end.  I clipped the corners tight. I obsessed about it for days. 

At night I also laid the polycarbonate panels down on it in case that helped.  At least it kept the soil warmer.  Nothing about that mess says "get your free nibbles here".  I mean how would they even know there was corn seed in there?  Except for the fact they'd found it there twice...

But it worked and yesterday, there were shoots.  Not just a few.  A pretty good percentage.  I feel so much better now.  But they are a LONG way from tasseling... so I still have to keep an eye on things.  I put the hoops back under the row cover to lift it up off of them.  They are still bird proof, but no longer mouse proof.  I hope they make it.

Reseeded June 17th

The pole beans are looking very good and reaching for the trellis. 
Bush beans in the other bed are sprouting but sluggish

Cantaloupes

I have three heads of broccoli just about big enough to harvest
and the cabbage heads are large and firm.  It isn't as much fun taking pictures if you have to uncover Tent City and these hoops are the hardest to deal with.  So I get a little lazy.

 

Summer Squashes

Hot Peppers

Tomatoes

Peas

Potatoes

Sweet Potatoes and Carrots

In addition to watering, we have been working in the heat on the next step to solve our wet lawn problem.  We're easing into it.  We have a large corner that needs to be turned into a rock garden like the last two areas.  We're starting at the garden shed deck.  When we don't really know what to do, flagstones are always a start.

We started by stripping the sod and laid down road mat.

At this point we were wishing for some sort of computer program to scan this pile and arrange it for us....

It turned out pretty well.  The large, flat stones are very stable.

It dresses up that corner nicely and I have been walking all the way to it to step up on the deck.  In the wet spring I avoid that corner completely.

Now to get rid of the rest of this muck mess

Summer 2020

As a gardener, I cannot help but feel that it's all down hill from here.  Each day will be a little shorter.  The birds will leave the nests and not sing as early each morning.  The early plants will begin to produce then age.  But for the moment, we are right at the pinnacle.  It doesn't get any better than this.  And we have had "perfect" weather.  Over and over.  Blue skies.  Sunshine.  Heat.  Its exhausting!  The house hasn't been cleaned in weeks, but my suntan has never looked better.  And we have had no rain.  In the past 4 weeks, we have had just a smidgen under half an inch and three other half-hearted sprinkles.  The lawns have burned out but the annual flowers, as long as they have been cared for, will never look better as there is no rain to dampen their blooms.

Right in the middle of this, the 500 gallon rain water tank ran dry.  Which hasn't happened since 2015.  Well actually, it almost ran dry, so yesterday I watered everything twice, including the apple trees, to drain it down to nothing, and then my husband's least favorite chore started.  Water Tank Maintenance.

First we clean the screen on the stone box which filters all
of the seeds and twigs off of the roofs with a wire mesh.
This has to be done two or three times a year anyway.

Then he pulls the submersible water pump

Attach the shop vac to the vent stack to pull fresh air in from the manhole

And then you've just gotta get down in there.

Then we begin to bail.  He uses a Cool-Whip container to scoop the sludgy water left at the bottom of the tank into a pail on a rope which I haul up and dump.  Then he uses a large drywall taping knife to scrape down the sides.  A hose to rinse off the sides, and finally, a sponge to wipe down the sides and soak up the last of the sludgy water.

There is no way to stay clean through this process.  This muck will turn anything black.

In the sludge there are some rust particles from the walls of the tank, but the tank itself is still in really good condition.  I hope I'm long gone before it rusts out and has to be replaced or abandoned

When all is finished its clean as a whistle.  Just a little rust above the average water line.

Because there are only hit and miss showers forecast for this week, we filled the water tank with the hose.  Like I have said before.  I can buy water.  I can't buy sunshine.

Clean and ready for more water.

Elsewhere in the garden, things have been growing great (including the weeds) 

At first I thought this was Vitaverde cauliflower, but now I'm sure it is a
Castle Dome broccoli that I used to replace some of the failed Cauliflower plants.
I can't wait for my first fresh Broccoli Salad!

I've found another advantage to using insect netting instead of floating row covers.  It is well known that cole crops prefer cooler weather.  And our weather has been in the high eighties, and ninety for several weeks.  My garden is generally about 10 degrees warmer than the ambient temperature, so it has not been unusual to see temperatures 100 or above.  But whenever I lift the mesh and feel the leaves, they are cool and comfortable.  I think the shiny fabric reflects away enough of the sun to keep the inside cool.  This isn't necessarily the case with summer weight fabric.  While it does filter some sun it also acts like a greenhouse and holds heat.

The cauliflower and broccoli plants are huge and healthy.

"Knee High by the Fourth of July"

I finally got my first row of slicing cucumbers planted.  I should have done that a week ago.  They were so happy to be set free they almost doubled in size over night.

I had to do some extreme weeding to clear the Purslane
Next I will remove the bolting lettuce and plant bush beans

My Garden Sweet peas finally took off and reached the top of the double trellis
Last year I put them on regular trellis and they flopped over.

Pretty soon I will be over run with peas.

I just love the velvet texture of cabbage leaves

The cabbages are beginning to form heads

My potato grow bags are doing well.  I've filled another 3 inches of soil on top and then added a layer of leaf mulch to keep the soil from drying out so fast.

Speaking of leaf mulch and containers drying out:  I am so pleased with my tomato container set-up this year.  The containers are probably 20 gallon.  I have water reservoirs in each one and below the reservoirs, I put coco chips to also hold water.  I filled the pot with moisture control potting mix and then topped them with a layer of leaf mulch.  Then I went two weeks in this hot dry weather without watering them even once.  Each time I stuck my finger down in it the soil was moist and cool.  Yesterday I filled the reservoirs with fish emulsion fertilizer.  My eggplants on the patio have the same set up.

Barlow Jap Tomato

Black Brandywine Tomato

Store bought Pineapple Tomato

Because my tomato transplants looked so miserable, I was afraid to throw out any backups.  I stuck one Black Brandywine in the end of a raised bed and it has rallied and taken hold. All of the plants are flowering.

Spare Black Brandywine

Throughout all this heat and watering and sludgy tank cleaning, the Rebecca Clematis has lounged on the bank overlooking it all and brightened our day. 

Undo - Redo - Maintenance

Into each life a little rain must fall

And with that rain comes a lot of dirt and sludge.  I know we all think of rain as washing things clean, but after it gets done washing our roofs clean it deposits the gunk in the garden water tank.  The tank was installed in 2010 and the last time it was cleaned was 2011.  Which is a long time.  So there was a considerable amount of sludge in there.  We have 9 inches of rain in June, but only 3 in July.  It had been almost two weeks since our last rainfall, and the tank was getting low.  Tim decided Sunday was the day to clean the tank.  Which meant I had to empty it.  We had less than a quarter of a 500 gallon tank left but that was still a lot of water.  So I set about to give everything a good soaking.  I filled watering cans and watered every container.  I flooded each bed.  I watered every Marigold.  Twice.  I watered the Strawberries, the Asparagus, the Horseradish and even the Chives.  Then I rinsed containers.  Finally it ran dry!

Tim set up his ventilation system (a shop vac on the tank vent) 

and descended into the pit.

He used scrapers to scrape clean the walls and then bailed the sludge into a bucket which he then presented to me.  Oh good.  Black Sludgy Water. 

I dumped that in the nearby brush.

Again and again.

This took a little over an hour but now the tank is good for another year or two. 

We've also had some Un-Do and Redo projects.  It seems there is always something. The clump birch has some sort of undiagnosable problem and we are down to one trunk (from 4)  But the remaining trunk is symmetrical and looks fine so we left it.  The alternative is to dig out the stump, repair the landscape bed and plant a new tree.  So we put that off.

We had recently redone this bed.  I was sick-to-death of the bedraggled old Black Eyed Susans and Bachelor's Buttons so I ripped those out.  We will put one of our signature "rock clump" plantings in the open area to the left.

A typical "rock clump" newly planted

My favorite "rock clump"

Again, mowing simplicity dictated a new outline.

Original Planting

The old outline was very artistic but tougher to follow.

Tim will go to great lengths to simplify his mowing patterns.  When we buy a new lawn mower, we must move all the landscaping...

2014

 The next project was the Irises around the well head.  They were getting too thick and root bound, and the wider zero-turn lawnmower that does not exactly fit between the Irises and nearest edge of landscaping. So we needed to adjust.

2009

This planting started out MUCH smaller.

2015

They bloomed well this spring but the leaves and flowers are getting smaller 

because they are getting so crowded.

So out they came.  I cut them short, dug them up and placed them on the edge of the compost pile in the shade.  They will be fine there until I divide them up and replant them.  Also removed was that chewed up plastic edging that the mower now runs over every time.

The new plan is ground level street bricks.  These will stand up fine to mowing.  Tim says "believe it or not, a square is easier to mow around than a circle."  The corner of the rectangle is carefully spaced exactly a mower's width away from that mulched edge.  I will plant about a third of the Irises back here and the rest will go in three new plantings I am planning.

So that was our mid-season Un-Do and Re-Do.  Someday we might get it right!