August weather to begin July

The 90 degree weather we're having all week is severely limiting my time in the garden.  Luckily, most things are taking care of themselves.  The lettuce bed, which was more ornament than food, looked quite lovely up until a few days ago when the plants began to seriously bolt and flower.  

I don't plan on purchasing seed for next year - or hopefully any future year - but will save seed from these plants to sow next spring.  I have no idea how much they will have cross-pollinated, so I'll be interested to see what kind of crop I get.

'Marketmore' cucumbers are producing beautifully, just as they have every year I've planted them.  So far, I've harvested five, and there are many more forming.  The old wagon wheel is working fairly well as a trellis.

Baker Creek seeds always sends free seeds along with their orders, and this year I tried the 'Lao' eggplant they sent.   I'm not an eggplant fan, but this one produces small, round white fruit, and I thought that would look pretty in the garden.  Of the four little seedlings I planted - which were pretty in their own right (and produced lovely little purple flowers) - two were immediately eaten up by some tiny insects I never saw and had to be pulled, and the other two, which I planted at the back of the wagon wheel, are subsumed by the cucumber vines.

The 'Henderson Bush' lima beans I planted on June 1 are filling out and starting to twine.

I wasn't supposed to plant spring cabbage this year, but I forgot I was going to try a fall crop to see if the insect damage would be less.  The rabbits ate down the few I had, and then the cabbage worms wreaked havoc on the ones that came back. So I pulled all but two that weren't thoroughly disfigured, and they may not get to stay either.  

There's also one 'Mrs. Maxwell's Big Italian' tomato in a cage in that plot, which became a hodgepodge when the cabbages were eaten and the zinnias failed to come up.  I finally sowed crimson clover seed throughout, and that's made a carpet out of which the zinnias have finally managed to grow and flower.

From another angle, after pulling out cabbages

'Mrs. Maxwell's Big Italian' tomato from seeds a neighbor gave me are a potato leaf variety like 'Missouri Pink Love Apple', but they're quite a bit earlier fruiting.  The plants are smaller at this point because I planted them later than the pinks, but maybe that's why they're fruiting earlier.  The pinks were planted when the soil was still very wet and cool.

Several days ago, our last rain was a quick downpour accompanied by high winds, and it smashed down all the flowering arugula, so I cut it off and replanted.  The carrots and beets planted in the same bed are probably happy that happened.

The beets that didn't get eaten off by the rabbits were mostly hidden in the shade of the arrugula, so they're still pretty small.

'Bull's blood' beets

Every morning when I go to the garden, I visit the berries I planted in the wildflower garden.  I've eaten the last of the raspberries from 'Glencoe'.  They were delicious, and there are twice as many canes that will bear fruit next year - all of four versus the two this year.  But they produced a lot of berries per cane.

That one 'Navaho' blackberry finally ripened, but it wasn't particularly tasty.

There are more coming on, so I'll see if that's going to hold true.

I only managed to get two 'Tarpan' strawberry plants to live, and one of them has produced one ripe berry, with others coming on.  They were as slow growing as the celery is (four months from sowing the seed indoors to setting out a plant).  I actually bought this variety of seed, not for the berries but for the uncommon red flowers and runners, to put in a hanging basket. The flowers come and go so quickly that I only saw a couple of them. I'm going to try again next year, hoping to get more plants so I don't have to have other plants in the basket hiding them.

In the end, I harvested more peas than I thought I might get after the rabbits ate them.  And then I pulled up the plants and sowed cowpeas (black-eyed peas) another neighbor gave me in their place.

I sowed the cowpeas on the 24th, and they germinated in three days, even without rain.  The ground was moist, and the sun was warm, so I guess that's all they needed.  After they sprouted, I laid down a layer of grass clippings, which I would have done as soon as I planted them if I'd had any available.  I use grass clippings to help retain soil moisture and prevent soil splashing onto the plants when it rains.  

The 'Petit Gris' melon vines have reached the top of their cages.

And a couple developing fruits have appeared, which has me thinking about how I'm going to let them fully ripen before picking and yet beat the raccoons to them.

I was thinking that the 'Petit Gris' plants were doing much better than the 'Savor' plants growing in the bed that has been mulched with tree bark because of that mulch.  Those plants haven't even reached halfway up their cages yet, and I haven't seen any fruits.  However, that may be because the vines growing in cages have so many leaves in a relatively small area that the fruit is hidden.

But it may not only be the mulch that's creating the difference.  In one of the beds, I have one each of 'Petit Gris' and 'Savor', and the 'Petit Gris' is outstripping the 'Savor' there, as well.

'Savor' on the left, 'Petit Gris' on the right

Peppers in front

  

The extra vines I stuck into the compost pile are doing well, but I haven't seen any fruit on them yet, either, and I don't remember which varieties they are!  Label.  Label.  Label. 

And over in the flower department...

I love these globe amaranths.

Globe amaranth and yarrow

 Climbing rose 'Moonlight'...

Hybrid tea 'Dark Desire'...

Stay cool, people.

Summer weather

We had a good run, but now the high temps and humidity are upon us.  The garden likes it, though.

The cucumbers and their relatives, the caged melons are looking very healthy. The cucumbers are going to outgrow their wagon wheel trellis very quickly, and I'm not sure how I'll handle that.  I'll lace some vines through the spokes, but I imagine I'm going to have to cut some back.  There are tiny little baby fruits hidden in the leaves at this stage.

'Marketmore' cucumber

French Charentais melon 'Petit Gris'

In case you're wondering, no the melons don't stay nicely within their cage boundaries.  I have to pull vine terminals back inside the cages every morning.  But since the melons are so delicious and I don't otherwise have room for them to sprawl, I don't mind at all.

'Petit Gris'  melons  in cages fronted by snack peppers

The peppers, like some other things, are looking rather pale, and I'm laying that onto the copious amounts of rain leaching the soil.  I did give some things a dressing of composted manure, but the peppers probably didn't get it.  

I'm pruning the tomatoes this year to keep them from being so bushy, and expecting them to put the energy they would have otherwise put into making more leaves into fruit instead.

'Missouri Pink Love Apple'

For some reason, that reminds me of an article I read recently about how plants determine where on the stem to start the next leaf.  I'm sorry I didn't save the article, but even though different plants have different leaf arrangements on the stem, each type has developed its pattern so that a new leaf comes out at a point that allows for them all to get the maximum amount of light exposure.  It's not just willy-nilly.  Something else to appreciate about the miracle that is the plant world.

The peas are winding down, and after the rabbits had their fill, I ended up with maybe a gallon of shelled peas.  I'll try again next year, and I'll put down some small animal repellent early.

The climbing rose 'Moonlight' is a nice little shrub right now.  I'm looking forward to it making its way up the trellis.

'Moonlight'

I should have planted more purple and white annual poppies at the front of the trellis to make a better showing.  From the one white poppy that showed up unexpectedly two years ago among the 'Hungarian Blue' seeds I purchased, I've gotten more each year and continue to collect seed rather than buy more.  In fact, I haven't seen any white annual poppy seed for sale in stores.  Now, after three years of them cross-pollinating,  I have the darker purple of the originals, white, and a light purple.

Interestingly, this year a couple of the whites are many-petaled, something I haven't seen in previous years.

Recently, when the weather was mild, I dug out another stretch of wildflowers where I'm making my perennial bed and mulched it.  When my gaura seedlings get large enough (I just potted them up into 4" pots), that will be their home. 

I stuck what basil I finally managed to get going into the space I planned for perennial Oriental poppies thinking I'd sow the poppy seed late this fall after the basil was spent, but when I looked again at the seed packet, it said to sow them May to August in this area.  Poor planning on my part forced me to then dig up the basil that was finally getting established and move it.  I've watered them in and shaded them with a winter protection tunnel I had on hand, so I hope they'll be okay.

Over in the cut flower garden, things are coming and going.  In actuality, the cut flower garden will end up being as much a bed of perennials as the perennial bed, but unlike the perennial garden, it won't have any shrubs.  Mostly flowers for creating arrangements.

Blue and white belladonna type delphiniums and orange butterfly milkweed

I love this yarrow.  It's from seed I collected from my son's back yard border in his Chicago suburb.  I brought the seed home in the late summer, and by the time I planted it the next spring, I had forgotten what color it was, so it was a nice surprise.    It was okay last year, its first, but this year, it's outstanding.

Every morning first thing I go out to the berry patch where I'm rewarded with a few ripe raspberries.  Next year will be better, as there are several canes growing now that will produce then.  This year, it's second, there is just one cane mature enough to produce fruit.  But it's producing lots.  

These are 'Glencoe'.

The one 'Red Latham' plant that survived isn't mature enough to produce, but I expect it will next summer, and the three 'Fall Gold' plants are starting to set fruit now.

I'm watching this little blackberry closely, just waiting for it to ripen enough to eat.  I thought it was going to be the only fruit this year after the dear pruned the plants shortly after I planted them, but there are still a few more forming.

'Navaho' thornless blackberry

Over in the rose garden, the shrubs are all struggling a bit from so much rain and cool weather.  It's produced some odd coloration in the leaves of a couple of the plants.  At least, I'm assuming that's what's doing it.  I hope it's not a virus.

Many of the early rose blossoms had some petal blight (as did the white poppies) that I'm sure was caused by the weather, but now that there's more sun, I'm not seeing it.

'Pat Austin' gets to stay in the rose bed for one reason only: her gorgeous salmon color.  And even that fades very quickly.  Otherwise, she's not a particularly desirable specimen for the bed.  The branches splay out like a rambler, and the flower heads hang down rather than face up. Also, they don't last at all when cut and brought in - maybe a day.  In this picture, I've got two branches staked to an upright position.

I'm going to start cutting the branches short when the blooms are spent and try to keep the shrub bushy and low. 

The two new blooms on 'Razzle Dazzle' aren't nearly as dazzlingly orange as the first blooms were.  I hope it reverts for the next ones.

 

'Razzle Dazzle'

Spider webs were everywhere this morning and coated in foggy dew.

Till next time, happy gardening.

I save rose petals.