The lost post

I see I set up images for a post last August and didn't get it finished. So, out of place, here it is without a lot of explanation.

Aztec zinnias

late tomato harvest ripening under cover - 'German Johnson' variety

too-late-planted cabbages (didn't get large enough to harvest)

perennial garden in full glory

I wish I could remember what this is:

It has pretty red stems, whatever it is.  It looks like zinnia leaves, but it might be a weed!

Monarch butterfly larva

ground cherries

I planted ground cherries thinking I'd make some jam from them, but it turns out they're like tomatoes, and once you boil them down, all you're left with is gajillions of seeds.

I don't know the name of this little black bee.  We'll call her Shirley.

Top: 'Yellow Butterflies' mullein;

Bottom: 'Cardinal' basil

The perennial garden was lovely...

It was the first time I planted tall verbena (Verbena bonariensis), and I absolutely love it.  Especially interplanted with the Russian sage (Perovskia).  It's not truly a perennial in this zone, but I hope it reseeds itself.  It may not, so I'm starting more seed indoors in March in case it doesn't.

dark purple = verbena; light purple = Russian sage

The old mimosa tree at the west end of the garden lost a couple of limbs in the winter storms, and  I think you can see why...

The August garden before a rain:

Going into Autumn

'Blue Spire' perovskia in the perennial garden

backed by Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta)

July was so hot and wet that only the most rugged plants managed to grow and produce, which excluded most vegetables.  The roses were plagued by petal blight due to the humidity, with the exception of a couple of weeks in late August.  

The garden spiders were at their peak, however.  Everywhere I turned in the wildflower garden and perennial bed there were big fat yellow and black spiders - Argiope aurantia - on big fat webs.

One vegetable that thrived throughout the whole ordeal was the okra.  This year, I planted a variety new to me - 'Carmine Splendor'.  I'll be saving seed from it to plant the next time I plant okra to see if it does as well in future years as it has done this year.  It's another red variety, which I like because of its ornamental value.  Others I planted didn't start producing pods until they were 3 feet tall or so.  This one began producing at about 2 feet and is now 5 feet tall and still very prolific.

(At least that's how I remember it.)

I love the blooms.

Nothing in the cucurbit family (melons, cucumbers) made it past the end of July.  I got two very small melons off about 18 plants!  My experiment to plant them with a perimeter of marigolds to discourage raccoons will have to be repeated next year.  The marigolds themselves did fairly well, but they, like the roses, suffered from petal blight.

Off the two vines I had growing on the compost pile, I got one pumpkin that quickly rotted.  This is what they looked like at the end of July:

It was just too wet.  I did get a few cucumbers before the vines gave up, but I had to pull them all up a good two weeks before I would have expected them to die out.  I recently planted some more seed, and they're up.  If the weather cooperates, I might get a few small ones before it gets too cold.

Tomatoes started out gangbusters (except for the favorite 'Missouri Pink Love Apple' which had the lowest production ever), but by the first week of August, they all looked to be on their way out.

late July harvest

In fact, I pulled up five of the nine plants and left the remaining four that seemed to still have a few green tomatoes on them.  They resumed growth the last week of August, and they're now starting to have some ripening tomatoes.  This week the temperature took a dive to the upper 60s and low 70s.  Hopefully we'll see more tomato ripening weather before the late October frosts that will put an end to them.

I had a new tomato pest this year: tomato fruitworm.

They eat deep holes in the tomato fruits, which makes these pests more objectionable than even the hornworms that eat the foliage.  Fortunately, they're killed by the same safe Bt pesticide, so if I would only be vigilant in spraying, I could save the frustration of finding a beautiful tomato spoiled by drilled holes.

The cabbages held their own but didn't get very big.  Every year I tell myself not to plant cabbages in the spring, but so far, I haven't remembered not to.  I promise, next year I'll only plant a fall crop.

Those ground cherries that I tried for the first time were actually tasty little things, but they didn't lend  themselves to making jam.  They were like tiny tomato sacks of oodles of seeds and hardly any pulp.  I was expecting something less tomato-like.  I don't know why.  The taste would have suited jam well, as they had a bit of a mango flavor, but the consistency did not.

'Aunt Molly's' ground cherry

I planted lima beans in place of the spring peas, and they now have some pods.

Harvest now consists of peppers, okra, small cabbage, and basil.

Ripe jalapeños destined to become jelly

The cabbage varieties were new for me - 'Primo Vantage' and 'Omero'. Both were mild and juicy.  I'll be planting them again.

'Primo Vantage' (top) and 'Omero'

'Omero'

I don't know why my red raspberries didn't produce any fruit, but I have a feeling it's because I pruned them back too hard.  I'll leave them this winter to see if they produce next year.

The 'Fall Gold' berries did produce,  however, and they were as delicious as I remembered.  These little guys taste like they've been laced with honey.

'Fall Gold' raspberry

Last year, their first, I got one or two at a time, but this year, I got small handfuls every two or three days for a while.  Of course I crammed them all in my mouth at once.  Glorious flavor.

As I said, the roses have been plagued with petal blight which spoils them for cutting and bringing in.  Their blooms have been nice and big, but the petal edges brown and rotten-looking.

That is, with the exception of a couple weeks recently when the rains held off and the sun was hot.  At that point, they went crazy with beautiful disease-free blooms.

'Poseidon' (lavender), 'South Africa' (butter yellow), and 'Shazam!' (peachy pink)

'Grande Amore', which is supposed to be a 4-5' tall bush but generally gets to nearly 7' high, made its usual spurt a little later than normal this year.  It's reaching for the stars at about 8 feet at the moment.

'Domina'

The silly cat has managed to sprint up the grapevine trellis and hide out in the top.

Stay safe.  Stay home as much as you can.  Wear your mask in public. We'll get through this Covid-19 pandemic sooner if everyone will just do their part.  I feel very fortunate to live in a space where I can garden, especially during this trying time.  

Cactus zinnias

The heat is on

With abundant sunshine and heat, the garden is in full swing now.

The 'Golden Muscat' grapes are looking good.  I'm excited to taste them in the fall.  This is the second year for the vines, which didn't produce anything last year.  This year they're growing so fast I've had to prune them back.

The caged melons are climbing upward now.  I'm REALLY excited for them to produce.  Hopefully, the marigolds all around them will mask the smell of the ripening fruit and interfere with raccoon feeding. 

'Red Swan' bush beans are producing abudant pods, and I've already harvested several batches.  Like red okra pods, they turn green when cooked.  They don't have any sweetness to them, though, and I doubt I'll grow them again, because they don't taste any better than grocery store beans.

'Red Swan' bush beans and 'Lincoln' peas

My idea of planting cabbages amongst the lettuce and carrots to "hide" them from cabbage pests was a total failure.  I don't know whether the decoy white cabbage moths I made did any good, because it wasn't cabbage worm that ate the plants.  I don't know what it was, but I suspect tiny grasshoppers for one.  They won't have been responsible for the holes in the middle of the leaves though, as they eat from the edges.

The cabbages I planted in the open spaces left in my tulip beds are faring much better.

'Omero' cabbage

'Primo Vantage'

'Marketmore' cucumbers are making their way up the trellis.

In fact, I found two extra early fruits that were very tasty.  One almost got too big before I found it.  I don't know why, but cucumbers for me are the hardest to harvest without overlooking some.

I want to try to pickle some this year.  Earlier attempts have been disappointing, but I found a "copycat" Vlasic dill recipe online that I want to try.  Especially since I planted some dill this year  in my cut flower plot.

Tomatoes have set lots of fruit (with the exception of my favorite variety - more on that in a bit), which is always exciting.

'Goddess Isis' cherry tomato

I'm trying two new (to me) varieties this year, because my favorite - 'Missouri Pink Love Apple' is such a sparse producer.  It's the best slicing tomato I've found for flavor, but it fruits quite sparsely, leaving nothing to can or make juice.  Also, 'Missouri Pink' is very particular about the temperature - too cold or too hot, and it won't set fruit.

I chose 'Valley Girl', a determinate variety (all ripening at essentially the same time)  for juice making and canning.  If they ripen at the same time, I can process them at one time.  They surprised me by being as smooth and pale colored as they are at this stage.

'Valley Girl'

The other new variety I chose is 'German Johnson'.  It's an indeterminate variety like 'Missouri Pink', so it should produce fruit over a longer period of time than 'Valley Girl', which is a better deal for fresh slicing. 'German Johnson' is advertised to do well in both colder and hotter temperatures.  Hopefully it will taste good, too.

It also has lots of fruit.

'German Johnson'

And this next one is the fabulous 'Missouri Pink Love Apple'.  I had to hunt just to find these couple of fruits.

'Missouri Pink Love Apple'

Red onions are sitting on top of the soil.  The whites and yellows are retaining their bulbs below the soil line.  I don't think I planted them at different depths, but it's possible, if unintentional.  At any rate, in previous years I've had trouble with onions rotting in wet soil.  Last year they were above ground in this manner as well, and they stored very well after harvesting.  So maybe having the bulb above the soil line is better in my garden.  I'll have a better understanding of that once I harvest all varieties.

The peas are spent, and the peppers I had planted amongst them and worried about getting enough sunlight seem to be doing okay.  I planted limas in place of the peas.

And they're now up and growing.

Over on the compost heap, 'Jarrahdale' pumpins (gray-skinned) and ground cherries are filling out around the Egyptian walking onions that grow wild there.

'Aunt Molly's' ground cherry

There are potatoes on the other side of the heap, most of which I harvested yesterday.  I didn't stab too many of them getting them out of the ground.

Potato flowers

Yellow and red potatoes

The perennial bed looks great this year.

And in the cut flower plot, the cactus zinnias are fantastic.

And now the bad part of late June gardening....the pests.  I've been spraying Japanese beetles for about a week now.  I failed to have a stock of Sevin - which I hate to use because of its toxicity - so I was using pyrethrin (also highly toxic to honey bees) and neem oil. Both killed the little b$%#@ds, but didn't provide any residual effect.  I was spraying twice a day.  

Yesterday I bought some Sevin, and the number of beetles was drastically reduced this morning.  In a few days I'll find out if that was just a fluke.

This is also the time of years that packs of raccoons come round to destroy anything in their path.

I trapped three and then decided to put everything out of sight overnight.  Before I did that, I put some garden cloth pins in the pots upside down so that the ends were all poking up out of the soil.

Unfortunately, that did not stop the raccoons.  So putting the potted plants out of sight at night has been all I can do if I don't want to keep trapping -- and I don't.  They also dug up every lupine seedling I transplanted into the garden.  Grrrrrrr!  Last year, I didn't have any more raccoons after the neighbors lit fireworks for several hours on the 4th.  I hope they do that again this year.

Have a great July 4th in quarantine!  Wear your mask when you go out.  I feel very luck to be far out in the country with a big garden in the time of a pandemic.  

Gold and orange cactus zinnias, 'Queen Lime' orange zinnia, verbena, 'Drumstick' allium