The Ornamental Vegetable Garden: June 2023

June 26, 2023 at 2:02 PM 0 comments By: m

Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot

This much heat is good for only one gardening task: washing out plastic pots for reuse next year. I get quite wet doing this chore, but I don't care when it's this hot.

The field poppies are looking a little more like the fields in Wizard of Oz. Honeybees absolutely love these poppies. They're abuzz all day long, so I don't know how Dorothy and the crew traipsed through the fields unstung.

The small Persian melon plants are making their way up their cages and looking quite healthy despite the extreme heat and lack of rain. (I've been watering from time to time, but they're in a spot they don't get as much as the rest of the garden. They do get some shade.)

Potatoes are harvestable size.

'All Blue' potatoes

'Yukon Gold' and 'All Blue' potatoes, 'Calima' green beans,

'Tender Sweet' carrots, and 'Babybeat' beets

Cabbages have felt the heat for sure. I was gone another week recently, and things were neglected. Young cabbage plants obviously needed more attention.

'Brunswick'

Jalapeño peppers are not looking good. I was hoping for a good crop this year in order to make more jelly. Not looking promising.

The snack peppers look much better than the jalapeños and are flowering.

I don't think this is going to be a successful year in the garden. Much too hot too soon, and so very little rain. I planted more tomatoes than ever before, hoping to have enough to put up some juice, but it's too hot to even set fruit. Flowers dry up and fall off. And if they do set fruit, it's too hot to ripen. What a bummer. I think my only hope at this point is for a cooler autumn and a late, late fall frost.

The roma type tomatoes are doing better than the slicers, but I wonder if that's because they get some shade. Their foliage is an ugly mess, but I've been told that's just the way they grow.

'German Johnson' slicing tomatoes

'Speckled Roman' roma tomatoes fronted by 'Cardinal' basil

'Speckled Roman'

'Babybeat' beets actually look good and are at the beginning stage for harvest. They also get some shade. Beet greens have been eaten up by insects in earlier years, so this year I'm trying to remember to spray neem oil on them. Not bad so far. I like to stir fry the greens with slices of roasted beets.

The celery I bought from a nursery this year seems to be coming along nicely. I don't know what variety it is. Sadly, it was only labeled "celery".

The pink celery I grew from seed is still very small. Celery I've grown, no matter the variety, has always been such a slow grower.

Here's Ben's video on growing celery: Growing Celery from Sowing to Harvest

After harvesting cabbage last year, I didn't bother to pull out what was left of some of the plants, and one of them took off again this spring. It's now a triple-header, and one head is ready for harvest. I think I'll leave this fall's plants in the ground overwinter and see if I get a repeat.

overwintered 'Primo Vantage' cabbage

Unfortunately, I was up north when some things were ready to harvest, including this 'Seaside' spinach. I'm letting it flower, and I'll try to harvest the seed for an attempt at a fall crop.

'Seaside' spinach

Some of the perennial flowers did better than the vegetables with the poor weather and lack of attention.

Drumstick allium

pink 'Shazam!' and yellow 'South Africa' roses

'Razzle Dazzle'

The forecast doesn't have any milder temperatures in store, but there is some rain showing for next weekend. I hope it's still there when we get that far.

June 12, 2023 at 12:16 PM 0 comments By: m

Weed-free again

After 15+ hours of weeding (!) the garden is looking good again. (Two weeks away at the end of May is not the best plan.)

This is what the whole thing looked like when I returned...

I came back to loads of fruiting blackberries. My hope now is that I get to eat some before the raccoons eat them all.

'Navajo' blackberries

Bunnies apparently favor green beans.

'Calima' bush beans

The 'New Red Fire' lettuce looked bleached out, with very little red on it, but the new growth is coloring them up again.

Last year, my wasabi radishes had no bulb on them at all. I thought I'd give them another try this year, and they did produce radishes. They don't taste any different from a regular radish to me, but I think they're pretty.

Some 'Tender Sweet' carrots on the compost hill are big enough to harvest. they're neither tender nor sweet. They're carrots. I keep looking for a sweet variety. I have some 'SugarSnax' just getting started. I'm hoping they will be sweet, but I'm not holding my breath.

'Tender Sweet' carrots and 'All Blue' potatoes

The potatoes are tall and lush, but when I dug one up, the spuds were still quite small. 'All Blue' is not a particularly large potato when mature, but they surely will get larger than these are now. They're a little hard to spot in the dark soil.

'All Blue' potatoes

The little potatoes taste and have a texture much like a red or yellow potato.

After I got some weed control over on the compost hill, I found the small Persian melons and the one 'Sugar Baby' watermelon plants were coming along just fine, despite the dry heat.

Small Persian cantaloupe

'Sugar Baby' watermelon

The melons are at the top of the hill, which originally when I started the garden in 2014, consisted of sod lifted from the lawn area where I made my garden and was about 5-1/2 feet tall. I now have a compost crate and use the much reduced hill for planting.

On the left this year I planted some Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia), and running along the south half of the hill's edge are 'All Blue' and 'Yukon Gold' potatoes. Cilantro grows voluntarily now on the south side, and I sowed carrots on the east.

The pet cemetery grew up considerably in the two weeks I was away.

My vision of Dorothy's skip to Oz through poppies when I planted field poppies has been disappointed. They're scraggly and kind of sad looking.

The roses were very happy in the dry heat.

'Razzle Dazzle'

'Shazam!'

I was able to put together some bouquets for a craft shop in Arrow Rock at the request of a friend. I think they're lovely.

Until next time, enjoy the early summer days.

June 07, 2023 at 3:14 PM 0 comments By: m

Hot, hot, hot ... and dry

So I'm back from my two weeks away, and the garden is overgrown with weeds. Some vegetables didn't survive (there was .6" rain in my gauge), but the garden is a riot of color, and the roses have absolutely outdone themselves.

'Zepherine Douhin'

'Shazam!'

'Razzle Dazzle'

'Neptune'

left to right: 'Grande Amore', 'South Africa', 'Shazam!'

foreground: 'Neptune'

Hollyhocks only had buds when I left.

After a couple applications of dicamba, I've finally managed to get rid of weeds and crabgrass in the paths around the flower plots. I'll seed the bare ground this fall.

Some vegetables didn't get nearly enough water. Peas are scraggly and drying out. Kohlrabi that wasn't shaded by adjacent rhubarb has burnt leaves.

Five cucumber plants dried up and died. Only two survived. Fortunately, one of them is the new variety I'm trying this year - 'Beit Alpha'. And the other is my staple 'Marketmore'.

Most lettuce is ready to bolt. 'New Red Fire' has matured to nearly all green.

I really like the variety 'Rouxai', a new one for me. It may well be a new one for everyone. The seed was expensive. The leaves are a beautiful dark wine.

I only have a few plants (the ones below were nearly lost in weeds), so I'm going to let them go to seed and have a bigger stand next year. That is, if they're come true to seed, and they might not.

The arugula stand is quite lush.

Baby beets, arugula, and, surprisingly, the cantaloupes look fine. I imagine it's because they get a certain amount of dappled shade under a mimosa tree.

The 'Savor' cantaloupe plants that were scrawny when I put them in are smaller than the small Persians, which was expected, but the plants look healthy now.

'Savor'

Small Persian cantaloupe

The weeds have had a two-week-long party.

'Calima' bush beans infested with purslane

I weeded the lettuce plot and the bean & pea plot this morning. It took me 4 hours. The picture below shows the difference in weeded vs not yet weeded halves.