February may have been particularly cold, May may have been particularly wet, and July the hottest month on record, and damage was done, but in spite of it, some things seem to be unaware.
Fortunately, the little yellow pear tomatoes are tasty enough, because I mistakenly planted 7 of them instead of the 'German Johnson' variety I intended.
I may be getting only half a dozen 'German Johnson' fruits because first it was too cold for them, then too wet, and now too hot. To say nothing of the fact that I only ended up with two plants.
One of the 'German Johnson' tomatoes is starting to ripen. I hope it gets ripe enough for me to pick before the raccoons eat it. Or, rather, take a big bite out of it and throw it on the ground.
'German Johnson'
A couple of weeks ago I sowed tatsoi seed alongside the beans that the rabbits stripped of leaves, and they've gotten much larger than I expected in that time.
Since then, I sowed some, 'Red Swan' bush beans between the two and replanted the last few of the 'Calima' bush bean seeds I had in the row the rabbits ate. Bless their hearts, though, the stripped plants are putting out new leaves which I've been spraying with deer and rabbit repellant. I hope both (or either, really) bean varieties have enough time to produce and ripen before a freeze. With the weather we've been having this year, I'm not particularly optimistic.
While the peppers had a rough start (like everything else), they fruited and are coming along. Surely they'll get a chance to ripen before any other weather disaster hits. Knock wood.
snacking peppers
red bell peppers
'Quadrato D'Asti Giallo' bell peppers
chili peppers
It doesn't look like my attempts to protect the grapes from birds by bagging some and by hanging reflective bangles is working.
They've pecked off both bagged and free grapes. I guess I'll just have to hope they can't get to every cluster and will spare me one or two. They didn't last year, though, so I'm not feeling hopeful.
The smut on the ornamental 'Striped Japonica' corn really got ugly fast. I wonder whether the word smut was used first for the fungus or for obscene pictures. I assume the former and, if so, can see why it was chosen for the latter. Disgusting.
I cut off all that was there and bagged it in the trash to prevent any dispersal of spores. Hopefully, there won't be more infections.
The kernels that are uninfected are small yet, but quite pretty.
This year I cut way down on the number of cucumber plants, as I usually have too many and have harvested a half dozen fruits so far.
'Marketmore' cucumber
The rain has let up, but the humidity hasn't, so early mornings, the cucumber leaves have beads of moisture at the margins.
The condition is called guttation, and it happens when there's enough moisture in the ground and air both that it's not evaporated from the leaf edges quickly enough as it's pulled upward from the roots like it normally would be.
The only reason I planted kohlrabi and kale this year is they were two of the free seeds offered with my Baker Creek orders. I usually at least give all their free offerings a try.
Off in the flower world, there's one lone Thai double blue butterfly pea vine. This is the first flower I've gotten in two years. Last year, none of the plants even survived. I'm not ready to give up though. In fact I'm encouraged to try again next year to get a wall - or at least a column - of these blue beauties.
This year, the cactus zinnia are doing quite well in spite of the weird weather we've had. Or maybe because of it. I don't know.
I love their multi-toned colors and fancy forms.
Be well and stay cool until next time.
'South Africa' yellow roses, cactus zinnias, verbena boriensis and perovskia
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