Pollination!

Last evening I went out for a final check of the garden and found that the honey bees had discovered the Sweet Corn.  I have never seen so many frantic Honey Bees in one spot.  They have been around this week.  On the white clover in the lawn.  On the Thyme under the Apple Tree.  Visiting the Cucumbers.  But apparently, the Sweet Corn pollen was at its prime!  I checked back this morning to get video in better light.  Talk about busy bees.

The pollen was scattered everywhere.

I am optimistic that this variety will be well pollinated.  At least half of the stalks were showing silks.  This morning the air was so heavy and humid.  We came back soaked from our morning walks.  I went out to lunch not wanting to work outside.  This afternoon we ended up on the deck in the shade of the house with an old box fan aimed straight at us.  We were praying that the storm clouds would burst and we would get a good clearing rain.  For hours it split around us.

About an hour ago it finally found us and now we are in the middle of a wide spread thunderstorm.  Not really windy.  Not too much lightening.  Just a steady downpour.  This will soak everything very well, fill my water tank again and wash away the corn pollen.  But we got many hours of perfect pollination before that.  I just checked my rain gauge through the widow with binoculars and we already have half an inch.

Hooray!  The next few days are supposed to be cooler and we will sure enjoy it.

Humidity!

 The humidity level is "only" 62% but I am so tired of sweating.  I am doing indoor chores today.  I did my bug patrol and half a weed patrol, and the deer damage patrol.  I clipped up Cucumber vines and I will go out later and tie Tomatoes.  We had an inch of rain yesterday afternoon which was amazing.  It topped my water tank back up and left the soil in all of my beds dark and friable.  Fryable?  At least Steamy.  I don't want to miss a day of Daylilies now that they are in full swing.

Daylily of the Day: Auh's Cherry Red

Random Thoughts

 Yesterday I was chopping down the spent flowers of the six foot high Valerian before it seriously went to seed... The Sunflowers are (so far) keeping pace with the Dill.  Their faces follow the sun each day.  Next year I am going to combine the two herb beds into one.  This much Dill is an incredible waste of space.  The Valerian is a monster and had a lot of aphids on it.  It would be excellent on the back side of a natural border.  The Feverfew is nice, but not a huge attractor of pollinators.  I am removing the Valerian and Feverfew and replacing with Dill and Mustard greens next year.  That way all of my shaggy herbs will be in one bed.

The Mustard I planted solely to occupy the flea beetles.  They actually prefer the Potatoes.  I will have to sow an early row of Mustard along the Potatoes next year.  I will still plant a square of Mustard because they seem to like that better than Eggplants which is a win.

Mustard at the end of the Dill

The Pole Beans are finally starting to fill in.  I will sow the last of the Seychelles, probably today, in the space under the wire cage.  The direct sown Marigolds along the edge are spotty despite being sown twice.  Heavy rain drove some of them in too deeply I think.

The potted Bell Peppers are catching up.

A view from the shade of the Maple tree up the River Bed garden.

The Viburnum thicket between the neighbors and my garden is always flanked by Golden Rod, Ferns and Asters.  I am trying to get the Milkweed to take over instead.  I was thinking I should weed whack the Golden Rod down by at least half to keep it from laying over in the driveway later in the season, but I see now that the Milkweed is spreading and coming up in half a dozen places, making it more difficult to avoid.... I may give it a try anyway before it becomes too sneezy of a job. 

I need to find a spot for these Hosta.  Last summer, the neighbor dug them out because she tired of defending them from the deer.  They were a bedraggled, munched on mess, but I threw them into some random containers of compost and stuck them here out of the way of the deer and ignored them.  They came back beautifully this spring.  I did find a spot for two of the thickest ones back when we were mulching and cleaning beds, and this is what is left.  I have a good spot for the white centered one. 

I awoke early this morning to gentle rain.  We got about a quarter of an inch which is perfect for the grass seed we sowed yesterday over the new soil on the septic field.  Now the sun is trying to break through and it should get into the low eighties today.  A perfect June day for tying up loose ends in the garden.

Not Too Bad

 I actually worked outdoors all day, just taking it easy with beaks to sit under the patio umbrella and sip water.  I got the last of the annuals planted figuring that they would be happier in the ground than the cold frame which is currently 107F even wide open.  I still have a few spare dahlias in there and the ornamental peppers.  I need to get it cleaned out and pitch anything I'm not going to use or find it a cooler spot.

This is under the north eaves of the garden shed in full shade all day long
4:30 pm

The north side of the raised bed gate post.

99F is my official temperature.  At least we have a nice breeze and the humidity does not feel as bad as it did yesterday.  It's actually a pretty nice summer day.  We are warmer than the official numbers at the airport which is typical.

The only things I watered this morning were the beds of sweet corn because of their bare soil, the new bean sprouts, and of course the sweet potato and carrot containers that get water every day.  The sweet potatoes are loving this!

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.

Well That Answers That

 I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I have put T-posts in the corner of this corn bed because I don't know how the variety will react to wind and rain and I might want to support it.  I did not think it was tall enough yet to be a problem.  I had one year where a nearly full grown bed of corn blew into a ramshackled mess, so now I like to have the option to support it.  I mean if it going to continue to rain every darn day all summer...

Solstice Sweet Corn

I've never had the Gotta Have It blow down even to this degree so I will put T-posts on the bed too.  I have them, so I may as well use them.  I drove the first ones into the corners, but since I only planted two rows of corn, I think I will put the T-posts at the ends of the rows and run a single string down each row instead of trying to criss-cross the string and surround the stalks.

Gotta Have It Sweet Corn

I have been brainstorming solutions to excessive rain elsewhere in the garden.  Below is the bed that had the Dahlia tuber that rotted.  I think it was two years ago that when I dug up the Dahla tubers in this bed, none of them were solid enough to save.  They had managed to bloom and stay fresh and healthy looking, but the tubers were a mess because the soil in this bed was just too damp.

I put this tarp up yesterday and it has weathered the wind and rain just fine.  Over night I had it positioned so the water was running off towards the gravel, but today's gusty wind has moved it around some.  Either way, having the water land on the edges where it can escape out to the walkway instead of soaking right into the center may be an improvement.

A Break In The Rain

Today started out warm and completely overcast, 73F and 93% humidity. 50% chance of a “torrential downpour” around 2pm.  We decided to trim weeds and mow the lawn early enough to beat that.  Around 11am it looked like it was trying to clear up but it turned out it was just organizing itself enough to rain which it did moments after the lawnmower was put away and before I had finished some of my other garden chores.  It was one of those times when I was already soaked through from humidity so I just finished up in the rain.  A little bit ago the sun finally came out and it looked like we were going to get an hour or so of nice weather so I went out to enjoy it while it lasts.  It is hot and muggy.  We already have the air conditioning on in the house just for humidity.  We had been enjoying cool nights with the windows open but this morning even the tile floors felt sticky.

Things are starting to turn around.  The peppers and tomatoes are starting to recover.  Below the dwarf tomatoes are about a tenth of size they were last year at this time.  Next week they are predicting a heat wave so I will be breaking out the shade cloth again.

Things are evening out but I am still facing a few challenges.  Pole beans is the current one.  Something is eating the Seychelles green beans as soon as they spout.  I only have a few plants.  When I plant my row of pole beans I start at each end, plant a total of a third row of Monte Gusto and two thirds row of Seychelles but I do it in two stages, from outer ends towards the center.  That way I get a longer harvest and when they start dying out they die out from the ends and I can pull those first.  At first I thought it was birds pulling the sprouts.  So I covered them with row cover but whatever it was, it wasn't birds.

1.  First planting of Monte Gusto yellow beans with no problem
2  Seychelles planted at the same time and now eaten down twice.
3.  Second planting of Monte Gusto today with mouse cover pushed down into the soil
4.  Where the second planting of Seychelles goes.

In case its mice I will add dryer sheets this evening after it gets done raining again.  As a backup, I planted Seychelles in a 6 pack cell and put it up on the potting bench.  I also have a pot of eggplants up on top where I am "hiding" them from flea beetles.

There were a few flea beetles on them last week, but I squished them and sprinkled diatomaceous earth around the soil for whatever ones dropped and hid in the roots.  These two little plants have quadrupled in size this week.  Just a little hail damage and some flea bites.

These two eggplants are a backup for the one I have in the garden which is not doing anywhere near as well.  I am about ready to pull that one and transplant the ones in the black pot over to the larger pot but since they are happy I am leaving them for now.  Apparently it's not just house plants that sulk if transplanted into a much bigger pot.  Next year I will have to plant them up slower and let them graduate through more sizes of containers.

And finally, if it ever stops raining long enough, I need to finish cleaning up the daffodils out of the perennial beds.  I have some annuals set aside, and the Heuchera from the firepit whiskey barrels to plant in the area below.  But I want to remove the Daffodil foliage at the same time so I don't end up planting the Heuchera on top of the Daffodil bulbs again.

I am going to put one of the Heuchera next to the deck too.  I was smart enough to check that there is room for a wire cloche over the plant in the winter to protect the evergreen foliage from the deer and rabbits!

And with that... the break in the rain is over.

Rotten Dahlia

 

I went ahead and dug up that wilted Dahlia today.  Yup.  Complete mush.  

I planted a sprouted tuber in its place since I had them.  I did not plant it as deep.  The soil around it didn't seem any more saturated than I would expect so it could be that this tuber had a nick or bruise that I hadn't noticed that made it more susceptible to rot.

I got my strawberry freezer jam made.  Just enough berries today and plenty more to come.  It isn't raining today but it looks like something could develop at any minute.  Complete cloud cover.

That's the fun of living close to the Great Lakes.    Not only to we get unpredictable lake effect snow, but we get lake effect rain too.

What to Title This? More Water I Guess

 Yesterday we got another 8/10 of a inch of rain.  That first picture right there is a Dahlia tuber that has had too much to drink.  I sometimes have water problems in this bed.  It is very dense soil and holds a lot of moisture.  I guess I'd better throw in the rest of the bag of Gypsum.  That is a Cafe Au Lait Dahlia.  I have a replacement but I may just pull it and leave a little more space for the others. I really doubt that it will recover at this point.  We are supposed to have "a couple of showers or a thunderstorm" five out of the next seven days.  Ugh.

At least my Pepper plants are enjoying the Iron-Tone being dissolved into their roots and are putting on some darker shades of green in their new growth.

That looks encouraging

Peas are forming pods

Hello Lady Bug
My camera was asking "what are we focusing on here?"

I had already done most of my perennial dividing, moving and replacing this spring.  There weren't really too many perennials to replace this year.  My Butterfly bushes all died back to the the roots and the largest one died completely so I had to replace it with one of my spare volunteers that I had tucked away. Also the Lemon Squeeze Pennisetum that we added to the big river bed last year didn't make it. 

I was sort of surprised because last summer it put on a lot of growth  (below) and was well rooted in.  I had planted two and both of them failed to break dormancy.  At first I gave them some time because having two plants in different spots of the same variety doing the same thing doesn't immediately say "dead" to me.  It may just say "late to awaken" like Karley Rose Pennisetum.  But by Mid-June I am declaring them dead.  Which is too bad because I really liked the grass.

Late Last Summer

The other plants we added are doing awesome.  Especially the Onyx and Pearl Penstemon.  This is an evergreen plant and so far (knock on wood) the deer have shown no interest.

I actually added a bunch of them, both Onyx and Pearl and Husker's Red.  Below there is one of each side by side.  The blooms are alike, but the Onyx and Pearl leaves are a deeper, more consistent color.

Neither one are as black as shown in the catalogs, but they certainly are doing well.  The one shown below has gotten a little beat up by the storms, but the stems just bend and keep on going.  I may put the two nearest the walkway in grow-thru grids next year just to keep them tidy.

A close up of the blooms.
The plant looks blacker in this photo.

Also added was an Instant Karma Elderberry

So anyway... since the ground was saturated I figured today was a good day to dig out those two Lemon Squeeze.  The roots were just fine, not rotted.  I had to cut them out with a Hori Hori knife.  There was no lifting them.   I replaced both with Uptick Creme Coreopsis that I had ordered to put somewhere near the side porch,but so far I hadn't had any big urge to put them where I'd planned to.  I want something yellowish in this spot and I still have one more Coreopsis that I can plant up front if I want.

It's handy to have a few options on hand to fill in spaces as inspiration strikes.  I hope this plant does better in this spot.  If it does, it will look appropriate in the creek bed environment.  If it doesn't... back to the drawing board.