The Ornamental Vegetable Garden: A break in the heat

Thankfully, it's much cooler this week so far. I've actually been able to go outside and do some much needed garden tending.

'Luna' hibiscus, dainty white gaura flowers, red gomphrena, and purple verbena

After a several weeks with too little (if any) rain, and with bright sun and high winds a few days recently, the ground is drying up. The field adjacent to my garden looks like this:

I've never seen it like this before. Luckily, I have access to water for the garden.

The weatherman said we should get .7" rain yesterday. We got .3" and this morning .25". It needs to pick up.

I've been getting 3 or 4 okra pods for several days now.

'Carmine Splendor' okra

Also, I'm getting a handful of 'Supersweet 100' cherry tomatoes every day.

If the weather doesn't go back to temperatures in the 90s too soon, I might actually get some ripe slicing tomatoes. Or at least this one. Fingers crossed.

'German Johnson'

'Omero' cabbages are kind of just sitting there. I probably shouldn't have planted them as early as I did. On the other hand, they took so long last year for even one of them to produce a head. Maybe, just maybe, I might actually get something to harvest this year.

The 'Marketmore' cucumbers and 'Savor' melons growing together on my makeshift trellis have reached the top.

I can now tell the difference by looking at the vines: the dark green leaves with a rounded tip are the melons, and the lighter green, flatter leaves with pointed tips are the cucumbers. The darker veins in the cucumber leaves make me think the melons are soaking up all the nitrogen in the soil. But the few cucumbers I'm seeing look healthy, so I probably won't try to fertilize.

Fortunately, as mentioned above, I have the ability to water the garden when there's too little rain, so it actually looks pretty good.

Rows left to right: 'German Johnson' tomatoes, 'Carmine Splendor' okra,

and 'Omero' cabbage

'Stuttgarter white onions

Meanwhile, over in the rose bed:

Left: 'Shazam!', Right: 'South Africa'

The following picture of 'Grande Amore' is actually pretty good. Must be the new phone's camera, because I have never been able to get a picture of this particular rose where you can see the separate petals. The light reflection seems to be essentially the same from every part of the petal, so they normally blend into a bright red blob.