Today In Pictures

 

A New Septic Sand Filter

Baby Snapping Turtle just passing through
Initially met him on the garden shed steps... eye to eye.
Had to come back and take a picture to prove it.  They're cute at this stage

Burning the spring brush pile between downpours
Including the top of that tree that fell in December

Golf Ball sized hail
And this had been melting for 10 minutes
Freaky lightening and tornado warnings

An inch of rain in 20 minutes
This was after half an hour.  the water was a runnin'

Time to hit the shower

Stick a fork in me I'm done

Early June Veggie Update

 I went back over the National Weather Service data for May 2024 and this May has an average temperature 7 degrees lower.  Now last year was a really good year and a little above average.  This year has been a challenge.  At this point everything is OK and growing, but it is not doing as well as last year.  See my Early June Update last year.  

Penelope Peas planted April 16th

Pea blooms ready to open

Carrots are absolutely outstanding compared to last year.  We had warm weather in April...

The first planting of beans is just coming up today.  I waited until this past week to sow these because beans seeds in cool, wet weather just turn to mush.  I have Marigolds direct sown alongside these and they are germinating too, but too tiny to bother photographing.

Dwarf tomatoes green and stocky but nowhere near budding.
Onions are growing well

The cabbage patch is unaffected by the cool, damp spring

Indeterminate Tomatoes and Bell Peppers are two or three weeks behind.
I gave the peppers some Iron-Tone today hoping to green them up.  The tomato plants are just fine and starting to put on a little size.

Havasu Hot Pepper Plants
Well....  compared to last year they are tiny.  But alive.
They weathered it better in this location than the Bell Peppers did in the cold frame.

This is a selection of each of the Bell Pepper varieties.
Again - happier than the same plants were in the cold frame.

The Perennial Herb Bed all over wintered plants

The Dill is the same as last year but down the center is a row of Sunflowers.  Last year I was unable to get these same Sunflower seeds to germinate without the mice eating them so this is a big win.

I am looking forward to some blooms

The Sweet Potatoes are small but survived and rooting in

Strawberries - are fantastic.  I have been snacking on these all day.  There were a couple of ripe ones yesterday and today they were ripening left and right.

First planting of Sweet Corn thinned

Last year I skipped Sweet Corn.  I just wasn't in the mood.  I was glad that I didn't have to water it through our extremely dry summer.  I would have been seriously rationing the rain water tank and prioritizing food crops only.  I bought farmstand corn once last year and even though they were SH2 super sweet hybrid varieties it was completely tasteless.  This variety is Solstice.  I have put corner posts in because I don't know if it will be prone to lodging.  Until I can observe it's reaction to wind and rain I want to have the option to tie it up if I have to. 

Second Planting of Sweet Corn not thinned yet
Gurney's Gotta Have It, my old standby

I also went back to growing potatoes.  I skipped growing them in grow bags last year because of the resources they take up in both potting soil and water and I used this location to grow dahlias last year.  But I missed having new potatoes to fix as "salt potatoes" so I need some fresh baby potatoes, something you just can't get at the store.  

Things are not as far along as last year, or even the year before, but we made it through a very challenging May and lived to tell about it.  The tropical type plants (tomatoes, peppers and sweet potatoes) are the most affected, but the cool weather crops like peas, cabbages, carrots, strawberries and even potatoes are thriving.  I have a nice apple crop going and will be bagging those this coming week.

My Dahlias are doing fine.  Maybe not as well as last year, but still pretty good.

And of course, almost all of my perennials are doing excellent.  I just have two grasses that have not broken dormancy.  I am reluctant to pronounce them dead just yet.  In a spring like this you just have to be patient.

What the Hail?

 We never get hail!  In the 22 years I have been gardening I can only remember getting hail two or three other times.  And this one was a doozy.  About five minutes of quarter and nickel sized hail.  It was already melting by the time I got out to take pictures.  The edges would start to melt in my hand immediately. I rarely get a chance to study hail.  It was mostly flat and had formed in bullseyes.

The grass looked like it was full of raw diamonds but the mulched areas is where it was the most apparent.  The apple trees took a little damage in lost leaves but everything else is fine.

My Hostas have a few small holes in their leaves but most of them are covered with bird netting.  The hail was too large to pass easily through the nets.  Even if it did pass through, it was slowed.  Only a very small percentage passed directly through.  Who would have thought that big hail was better?

I checked the vegetable garden over carefully.  Only one plant showed any damage at all.

It was an interesting weather event with no serious consequences.

Deer Netting In Place

 Last year was the first year that I tried protecting the Daylilies from deer snacking by laying bird netting over them.  I had already successfully used it on Hosta a couple of years, and it also proved to be effective on the Daylilies, but I had some trouble with the buds and blooms being caught in the net.  I figured that I needed to somehow suspend the nets over the lilies so that hopefully, they would have enough space to bloom without being caught.  I estimated that I needed to raise them about 30" off the ground.  I have quite a few wire legs that hold my grow through grids but I needed taller ones.  Kinsman Company sells the grids and the leg separately, so this spring I ordered a bunch of 36" legs to round out my existing collection.

I am pretty happy with how they turned out.  It is a little difficult to photograph it because you can't really see it well until you walk up to it.  And that's perfect right?

These legs have curlicues at the end that catch the net

I had more than enough netting from last year, most cut to the right size already.  And I managed to fold them up and store them and not get them mixed up!

I let the net drape down about 8" to 10" on the ends and sides.  The nets are nice and taut so nothing should get caught up in it accidentally.

I also used a few plain garden stakes as tent poles to raise the center of larger areas of netting.

In some places I can clip the net to an existing fence.  The birds can't fly into this because of the 1" hardware cloth that blocks them.  They do fly through the larger grid so I have to keep the net lower.

At the corner is a stake that has sort of a shepherd's hook in the end

This does not mean that I won't have to spray repellent when the buds are forming up.  The netting is to back up the repellent spray.  Neither one is completely effective alone.  These nets will probably get chewed on a few times but with two layers of protection I ought to be able to save most of my flowers, even during rainy spells.

Peony Season

 I always look forward to the first day of Peony season.

Late Frost

 38F in the garden this morning.  Despite it being very windy last evening when I covered everything, the frost cloths stayed in place and everything stayed protected.  I highly recommend Dewitt's Supreme Row Cover.  I started with Garden Quilts from Gardeners and they claim to protect the same degree, and let more sunlight through, but they get tattered pretty easily.  This stuff comes in a roll and holds up very well.  It has a certain stiffness that makes it easier to handle when folding etc.  I have it set up as a crop cover over low super hoops on the sweet corn beds and it has a wonderful greenhouse effect during the day if you are trying to warm a crop.  I am also germinating my cucumbers under there.  I am planning to buy another roll for next year and phase out the Gardener's covers.  I will still use their summer weight fabric to protect cucumbers etc. during the actual growing season.  This Supreme Frost Cover only let's 50% of sunlight through and the summer weight lets 97.6% through.

Brrrrrrr......

That Better Weather Was a Ruse

 Yesterday's weather was awful.  At 8am it was so overcast it appeared to be  pre-dawn.  We dropped from an overnight temp of 50F to 46F (8C).  It was breezy with lake effect rain.  I agreed to go to a tractor pull and sit on the bleachers huddled under an umbrella in that cold rain just because it was more appealing to me than sitting in the house yet another day looking out a the shivering garden.  Thankfully the sun came out this morning and we are at almost 60 degrees (15C) today.  All my raised bed garden and cold frame need are sunshine and they can improve the temperature.

The Sweet Corn has managed to come up under the frost cloth.  The peppers are a little wilty in the morning but they recover by end of day.

The eggplant below is losing the leaves it relied on in the last long stretch of cold rain, but the new leaves are OK so far.

The peppers and tomatoes below are holding their own and maybe looking a little greener.

The potatoes couldn't be happier which is a little weird.  Maybe they are just happy that there have been no flea beetles braving the cold to munch holes in their leaves.

The Celosia in the Fire Pit Planter are NOT happy.

It looks like we will have a decent crop of apples.

I have only spotted one single pear on the pear tree.  But it is also really loving the weather for some reason and is putting on a ton of velvety new growth.

Here are a few bright spots in the perennial gardens.

Callie's Memory Peony

Southern Charm Verbascum

Southern Comfort Heuchera

After supper I have to go out and cover a few more things because we have a frost warning for tonight.  A predicted low of 36F (2C) which will probably be OK for the veggies in the raised bed garden but maybe not for the annuals out in the landscape.  I have the covers.  I need to use them.