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

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.

Photo dump & other notes

 I realized I had too many pictures to wait through two weeks.  So here's a quick photo dump.

tomato zoo:  'German Johnson' caged "pink" tomatoes

foreground: oregano and chives

All these lettuces were sown at the same time.  left: 'Green Ice', center: 'New Red Fire', right (sparse): 'Rouge D'Hiver'

'New Red Fire'

'Beit Alpha'  cucumbers

left: 'Calima' bush beans; right: 'Lilian's Caseload' peas

'Seaside' spinach

I hope to soon be able to sit on this bench and snack on ripe cherry tomatoes that I plan to train up on the wagon wheel.

'Supersweet 100' cherry tomatoes

When the potatoes first started coming up, it wasn't obvious which were 'All Blue' and which were 'Yukon Gold'.  Now that they're bigger, it's easy to tell.

'All Blue'

'Yukon Gold'

The beets are sprouted.  I sprayed them with neem oil before I left, but I'm afraid in two weeks' time, when I return, they might be full of insect damage.

'Babybeat' beets

I also felt I had to spray the rose bushes with Sevin (carbaryl) because Japanese beetles usually start showing up around the first of June, and I wanted to give them a fighting chance.  I hate to do it, though, and frankly, it might have been a waste since the blooms aren't yet open, and that's what the beetles attack.  I don't like spraying Seven when honeybees are about, and I could hear lots of buzzing in the thyme flowers on the floor of the rose bed.  

When I got a closer look, I realized it was not bees, but flies.  Large flies.

While flies also pollinate, I didn't feel as badly about them encountering a contact insecticide as I would have honeybees.   But...

I didn't know what kind of fly these were, as I don't think I've seen them before, and certainly not in the large numbers there were.  I set Google Lens to identifying them, and when I learned that they are in the Tachinid family, I felt badly again.  The Tachinids I'm used to seeing are much smaller.  Tachinid flies are quite beneficial besides their pollinating ability, as they parasitize caterpillars, so they could be a big help to control vegetable pests.  On the other hand, if they parasitize butterfly caterpillars, I wouldn't like that.  So I don't know how to feel about the whole deal.  Maybe I'll just call it a wash.

I'm amazed at the two Golden Muscat grapevines.  Early this spring I had to dig them out of the garden proper where they were taking over.  To do so, I had to disentangle them, so I chopped most of the tops off as well as most of the roots. There was about the same amount under gound as above ground - no more than two feet in each direction - when I put them in.  I just stuck them in the ground in the wildflower bed at the base of two birdhouse poles, watered them in, and left them to their own salvation.  Not only did they salvage themselves despite the dry March and April we had, they seem to be undaunted.

Overnight one night, somebody's baby fell into the basement window well.  Its mother may not have told it the cautionary tale of Peter Rabbit.  Although it was small, possums can scratch and bite (and hiss and growl, which are very unnerving, but not harmful), so it was quite the undertaking to get it out without injuring myself or it. I tried to prod it to walk up a board, but it was having none of it.  It rutted up some dead bald cypress leaves and stuck its head under them.  I assume, like a human baby, it thought if it couldn't see me, I couldn't see it.  

I tried to hoist it up using two thick pieces of tree limb, but couldn't keep it balanced on them. Finally, I lowered a bucket down over top with a quick flip to turn it upright, scooping the creature inside. Luckily it wasn't quick enough to get out before I lifted it out to the yard.  It moved quite slowly, probably worn out from its travails.  

Poor thing was rather lost when I turned it loose, and rather than running, ambled around in circles a while before it slowly struck out for somewhere else. I hope it found its way home before a large bird of prey spied it. (I once saw a bald eagle eating a possum at the edge of the yard.  It didn't leave much behind but fur.) 

Won't this baby's mom be surprised if it does show up!  "How on earth did you get out of that trap?!" Stories will be told for generations.

See you in a couple of weeks after I've spent the hours necessary to get two weeks' worth of weeds out of my garden and clip out dead flowers.

Beautiful weather after the rains

Lush and green, flowers blooming...it's lovely out there.

New growth on the tomatoes looks strange to me.  Curly, like there's been herbicide damage, which there hasn't.  I assume they're responding to the weather, but I don't recall this ever in the past.

The potato-leaf 'German Johnson' variety shows it clearly.

'German Johnson'

And the 'Speckled Roman' are showing it all over, even on the old growth.  I haven't grown these before, but it just doesn't look right.  

'Speckled Roman'

I'm very interested to see if they look different later in the year, and whether there's any resulting effects on the fruit.  I sure hope not.

The walking onions are heading.  I don't use these in cooking, because I don't care for the flavor, and they're tough.  Also, they're really hard to control.  They pretty much become a weed.  They're taking over my compost hill.  In this spot in the garden, I keep them limited by pulling.  I like to keep some, because I think they're interesting to look at.

'Egyptian walking onions'

Arugula, which grows fast, is coming out.  I've learned to sow the seed after lettuce has come up and begun to get good growth on it so I'll have comparable sized leaves from each for salads.

I haven't grown beets for several years.  I'm excited to see how these 'Babybeat' plants turn out.  I'm planning on having beet greens to mix in salads, and I hope the small beetroots will be tasty.

A few 'Primo Vantage' cabbage plants that I didn't pull completely out of the soil are leafing out.  I don't know if there will be any useable heads from them, but I'm leaving them grow to find out.

Small Persian melon plants look quite happy after transplanting.  I've surrounded them with marigolds to hopefully mask the aroma and discourage raccoons.

'Savor', my favorite, on the other hand, are not doing well.  They didn't do well in the propagation chamber, so I'm assuming the seed wasn't still good.

'Seaside' spinach is looking very good.  I'll be planting this again in the future.  It has a nice mild spinach flavor with a substantial leaf.  

Roses are beginning to bloom.  Always exciting.

'Pat Austin'

'Zepherine Drouhin' climbing rose

I'll end with pretty flower pictures until next time, which will probably be in about three weeks when I return from a trip to Wisconsin.