The Ornamental Vegetable Garden: The long, hot summer

This unrelenting, oppressive heat may be preventing me from being out in the garden, but the garden is happily taking good care of itself.

The cucumbers on either side of the entry arch have met each other at the top, and the cucumbers have been plentiful.

All the onions have been harvested and are drying out in the cellar. Well, that's the idea, anyway. The cellar is quite humid.

The lima beans are now setting fruit.

The 'Savor' French melon cage is covered with vines.

Can't wait to get into those melons.

The 'Bull's Blood' beets are lovely. The greens are delicious steamed with a little vinegar in the water, and the beetroots are mildly sweet. This variety has performed the best for me, but they don't make a dark red liquid when canned like the 'Shiraz Tall Top' and 'Detroit Red' varieties.

Insect pressure hasn't been so high this year, but the manageable Japanese beetle population is no doubt due to the fact that soybeans aren't planted up near the garden this year. That doesn't mean I don't have to keep after them, and I missed this little rose:

Another rose showed this funny feeding pattern:

That's a sign of leaf cutter bees. Unlike the Japenese beetles, however, I won't try to stop them. They're pollinators.

While we're on the presence of insects, I got this shot of a tiger swallowtail on the monarda in the wildflower garden.

I won't be planting Zi Su again. I didn't think much of the taste. The leaves are pretty, but slightly hairy, and they taste like what I imagine weeds might taste. I thought they might make pretty inclusions in cut flower arrangements, but they drooped and wilted quickly.

Purple Zi Su and red-veined dock

Foreground: Queen Lime zinnias and marigolds; mid-ground: lima beans and cabbage;

background left: beets, right: zi su

At last, the spicey bush basil is making a nice little hedge, and the 'Red Rubin' and 'Purple Ruffles' basil is finally filling in behind it.

The tomatoes are lush and full. Several large green ones are on each plant. It may be a long time before they're red, since, according to something I read, they ripen between the temperatures of 50 and 80 degrees. The weatherman says it's going to cool down this weekend - to 88!

'Copia'

'Carbon'

Foreground left: lima beans; right: carrots

Background: tomatoes

The cherry tomatoes - 'Sungold' and some from seeds I saved from a neighbor's garden last year - are producing tasty little orange-gold fruit. They're a nice size on the plants in the garden, but quite small in the large pot I have on the patio.

The roses are doing well, but I have to keep them sprayed with Sevin to keep the Japanese beetles from destroying them. I'm going to try a different insecticide next year for two reasons: 1) insects can become resistant to insecticides that use the same method of toxicity, and I've already used Sevin for three years in a row; and 2) Sevin leaves a white residue that's obvious on the leaves and on the dark colored roses.