Summer photo dump

Wheel bug assassin on cabbage leaf

'Tasty Bites' Tania style mini cantaloupe (Cucumis melo)

 'Savor' French Charentais type canntaloupe (Cucumis melo var. reticulatus)

long sweet peppers

chili peppers

jalpeño peppers

bumble bee on 'Black Eyed Stella' daylily

globe amaranths (Gomphrena)

'South Africa'

'Shazam!'

'Shazam!'

'Passionate Shock' daylily

'Casa Blanca' oriental lily

'Stargazer' oriental lily

 UPDATE:  This forecast looks like a life saver.  Hallelujah!

UPDATE:   Mon: .3", Tue: .25"     boo.

Mid-summer gardening

Thank goodness the roses had no problem with the recent flooding.

'Razzle Dazzle'

'Neptune'

This is the only rabbit I've seen this year.  A shy, and precious, visitor...

It's hard to be annoyed with this little fellow, even though he's (she's?) eating my bean sprouts.

The flowers for cutting were put off by all the rain, but I've managed to get a few anyway.

Cactus zinnias, 'Cherry Brandy' echinacea, rattlesnake master, 

'Mandarin orange' gomphrena, butterfly milkweed, and flase indigo

The Japanese beetles haven't been as plentiful as some years, thank goodness, but when I miss capturing or spraying them for just a day, they do some serious damage.

Fortunately, there have only been a scattering of them on the pumpkin vines and corn, because I can't spray there....

...because scores of honeybees are having a heyday in the flowers.

I can spy several little fruits, and I'm anxious for them to mature, because they're pie pumpkins.  

The ornamental corn is doing some weird things.  (And it's not as ornamental as I was expecting.)

Most of the "ears" are shooting out of the husks.  There's only one that looks like a normal ear of corn on a stalk.

Probably won't be planting this again, but I might try some sweet corn next year.  Might.

I crammed a bunch of cabbages in a relatively small area, so when I inevitably lose some to rabbits, cutworms and cabbage moth caterpillars, I might end up with a few edible heads.

'Primo Vantage' cabbage seedlings

'Omero' purple  cabbage seedlings

The rhubarb is coming back.  With the exception of the two newest - and most favored because they had redder stems - that is.  I do hope those aren't dead.

The toadstools were happy with the flooding.

I'm bummed about the tomatoes.  I managed to mislabel my seedlings, and ended up with only two 'German Johnson' plants and six 'Yellow Pear' cherry tomato plants.  I didn't think I even had that many of the cherry tomatoes.  I was aiming for one, and seven 'German Johnson' plants.

I planted the one I thought was a 'Yellow Pear'  against a trellis.  And that turned out to be one of the GJs, which would do much, much better in a cage.   Rats!

'German Johnson'

'Yellow Pear'

The cucumbers, which I thought might die from all the rain, managed very well and are climbing up the back of my wagon wheel.  The four o-clocks in the front are not what I was expecting.  Perhaps I don't remember what four o-clocks do, but I didn't expect the flowers to have such long tubes.  And then again, maybe they don't in normal rainfall years.

The 'Cardinal' basil is looking pretty at last, with its bright green leaves and dark red stems.

The Charentais melons are climbing up their cages and over the marigolds.  Fingers crossed, because last year was so bad for cucurbits that I didn't get even one melon.

My cousin recently told me about an app that helps you identify anything you frame in your phone's camera lens.  I found Google Lens to do that, and have finally, after seven years, been able to identify a flowering plant as toadflax, and name two troublesome weeds that plague the garden...

'Green carpetweed'

'Prostrate spurge'

The spurge is one I had known in California from my weed science courses, but I couldn't recall the name.  It reminded me of puncture vine, but I knew it wasn't that because it has no thorns.  Thankfully.  I'm eager to find out next spring what the ground-covering weed is that has the teeny tiny blue flowers, which I think may be bird's-eye speedwell.

Another weed that's trying to take over is purslane.  I've been battling this one ever since I started gardening.  When you try to remove it, it easily breaks apart, and each part roots itself with ease.

'Purslane'

One year I let it go, because it's edible.  I didn't much care for it though.

But....the Stargazers are in full bloom, and it smells heavenly right here...

' Til next time.

Potpourri

Craspedia, aka Billy Buttons, Sun Balls

I'm at another spot where I have loads of pictures but not a theme.  So, here's another download:

There are plenty of insects out and about.  Not all are so destructive as the Japanese beetle.  In fact, here are some helpful little critters, still sleeping on an early, dewy morning, sharing a bed:

Honeybees and wasps

Bumble bee on Echinacea

This guy, on the other hand, is very unwelcome.  It's a shield bug (or stink bug) nymph (juvenile).  It's very tiny.  I found several of them munching on my raspberry fruits.  That is unacceptable.

The June beetles aren't particularly helpful, but they're not in swarms either, so I just take their picture when I see them and move on.

Green June beetle on Monarda (Bee balm)

There's an abundance of tiny green tree frogs this year.  At least I think they're tree frogs.  And some bigger guys hopping around the garden and in the grass.

The tomato plants have several large, but green, fruits that have been in a holding pattern for a long time, and are never going to ripen if the temperature doesn't go down.  Tomatoes, I've read, ripen between 50 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and it's barely getting below 70 at night.  

'Missouri Pink Love Apple'

I picked one each from both tomato varieties ('Missouri Pink Love Apple' and 'Mrs. Maxwell's Big Italian') to bring indoors to see if they'll ripen any faster.  They're not going to get any bigger.

The melons, on the other hand, are managing quite well.

After bunny feeding, the beets are so sparse that I haven't even yet bothered to see what they're producing.  The tops look good.

Onions are coming along great.  I sowed these from seeds, and I think I'll do that every time from now on.  It's quicker than planting sets, and easier.  Perhaps cheaper.  I didn't think to compare.

I've harvested about a dozen cucumbers so far, and the plants seem to be doing just fine on that old wagon wheel.  

This year, I'm experimenting with a volunteer redbud to see if I can clip it into a shrub.

The Stargazers are absolutely fabulous right now.  They're four years old and have never looked better or produced more blooms.

I also have 'Casablanca' Oriental lily this year.  They're still small plants, but the flowers are surprisingly large - even bigger than the Stargazers.  And gorgeous.  Pure white.   I'll have to get some more.

Like the 'Casablanca' lilies, the double Stargazers (aka rose lily) I planted last fall at the same time are small plants.  The flowers are smaller than my Stargazers, but they're more in line with the size I expected from the new bulbs.

I'm anticipating them, and the 'Casablanca' matching the height of the Stargazers in a year or two.

A couple other flowers beginning to bloom:

 

'Green Twister' Echinacea

Lisianthus

Apart from the first flush of roses in May, the rose blossoms have been rather puny.  And the entire 'Winter Sun' bush that had such plentiful, gorgeous blooms last year is looking very poorly.  The canes are small and spindly, the leaves keep yellowing and dropping, and the buds are miniature.  I don't know what happened to it other than perhaps it's intolerant of wet soil.  I thought it might pull out of it when the rains stopped, but not so far.

I've resorted to putting organza bags over the rose buds so I'll have something that hasn't been eaten by Japanese beetles to put in a vase.  It makes for a silly rose bed.

'Queen Lime' series orange and red zinnias, 'Snowdrift' marigolds, daylilies,

Stargazers, Gomphrena (globe amaranth), yarrow, and roses

Stargazer lily, Yarrow, 'Queen Lime' red zinnia,  'Carmine' globe amaranth

'South Africa' rose and 'Strawberry Fields' globe amaranth (Gomphrena)