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

'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.

'Grande Amore'

'Poseidon'

The following photos show the progression of color and form in 'Razzle Dazzle' roses.  Each picture is of the same spray of flowers.

Pretty from beginning to end.

Fingers crossed for more rain, and loving the cooler temps.

'Luna' hibiscus

Gardening in Hell

Record heat the past several weeks, and no relief in sight for the rest of the month.  Then we go into August.  

And so the garden is being somewhat neglected.  Last year it flooded.  This year, it's in drought.  Of course, we're not alone in weather woes this year.  The entire globe is suffering record heat, and half of it is on fire.  End times?  Well, until then, on we go.

The daylilies are managing, but are not at their best.  

'Black eyed Stella'

This next is one I got from a friend last year, along with several other varieties.  It had gotten mixed in with those labeled 'Passionate Shock', but turns out it is 'Scarlet Marie', a double-flowered variety.  The first double I've ever seen.  It's a gorgeous color.

'Scarlet Marie'

'Scarlet Marie'

Over in the vegetable plots, it could be worse, but due to the adverse weather and the fact that I didn't plant nearly as much this year as in previous years, it's "slim pickins".

'Carmine Splendor' okra, 'Marketmore' cucumber,

'Supersweet 100' cherry tomatoes, 'Calima' green beans

The onions are doing okay.  I'm sure they're helped by being watered a couple of times, along with the rest of the vegetables.  

My onions always push themselves above the soil surface.  I sewed them deeper this year to see if that made a difference. It didn't.  The first year, I planted bulblets.  They didn't push to the surface, and it was one of the best onion harvests I've had.  I don't know if that's because of the difference in planting bulblets vs seeds or if that year was just a great year for onions.  It was the first use of the soil for vegetables.  But I imagine I also planted the bulblets deeper than I plant the seeds, just to get them covered.  I don't want to sow the seeds any deeper than I did this year, because I'm afraid they wouldn't come up.  I could probably experiment with that. At any rate, it doesn't seem to be a problem.  In fact, they stay cleaner this way.

'Stuttgarter' 2022

Mature onions in 2015

2015 onion harvest

The cucumbers are rapidly covering the makeshift trellis I erected.  I only had a few seeds left from previous years in the freezer, and they didn't germinate well.  I finally got three or four plants, but it turns out at least one of them was a volunteer melon!  And I can't extract it from the tangle.

There's also a volunteer melon over in the perennial bed.  I'm guessing raccoons are responsible for that.  What I thought was a volunteer melon earlier in another spot turned out to be a hollyhock.  My whole garden is in turmoil this year.

'Marketmore' cucumber, and 'Savor' cantaloupe

'Savor' cantaloupe on the cucumber trellis

Tomatoes are at least getting larger.  Some of them anyway.  In this heat, I don't expect them to ripen any time soon.

The 'Missouri Pink Love Apple' plants that don't get as much sun as the other varieties are actually doing just as well.  I thought they might even do better now that the temperatures of Hades are besetting us, but I can't see any noticeable differences between them and the plants that are never shaded.  The difference is in the growth habit - 'Missouri Pink Love Apple' is a much less dense and much less prolific variety than 'German Johnson' - not in the growth.

'Missouri Pink Love Apple'

'German Johnson'

'Supersweet 100' 

I'm surprised that the cabbages are still even growing.  'Omero' still looks puny compared to the green variety 'Primo Vantage', but even they're not looking so bad these days.  

'Omero'

The okra looks content enough and has been harvestable the past week or so.

Flower of 'Carmine Splendor' okra

Roses are holding up okay, but the humidity isn't doing them any favors.

'Mother of Pearl'

'Grande Amore' in early morning dew

Til next time I can stand to go outside...stay cool.  Don't overdo it.

Early summer garden

Perennials and roses are abloom, and the vegetable garden is providing harvests.  This may be peak time for gardeners in mid-Missouri.  Peas are finished, but I'm now harvesting green beans.

'Calima' green beans

Stray volunteer lettuce plants are growing in various places, including the bean row, and I'm just letting them go so I can collect seeds.

The cabbages I (trans)planted June 10 don't seem to be growing very fast.  Maybe it's too hot.  The 'Primo Vantage' green variety is doing better than the 'Omero' red ones.

'Omero' cabbage

Okra seed germination was poor this year even though it wasn't old seed.  I started with 2 rows, and had to move some to end up with just one row.  

'Carmine Splendor' okra

There are a couple of fruits on the long sweet pepper plants.  I grew them from seeds I collected from a pepper I got at the grocery store, so I don't know what variety they are.  I just hope they're as good as the store peppers.  I've been spraying them with an epsom salt solution to try to enhance growth.   Probably need to water them more.

I tried the method of growing potatoes in straw, but I've not been pleased.  I did get three medium-sized potatoes off one plant today, but the rest aren't producing.  Maybe it's been too dry?  Maybe 'Yukon Gold' potatoes don't do well by that method?  Maybe I don't know what I'm doing?

The garlic was finally ready to be harvested.  I'm going to braid and hang them.

The French Charentais melons ('Savor') are starting to climb their cages and flower.

One 'German Johnson' plant has a small green fruit on it.

Cucumbers have finally gotten going.  The seeds were two or three years old, and even being held in the freezeer, they're losing viability.  I'll have to buy new seed for the next planting.  Before I started freezing leftover seeds, I found that even in the second year, seed viability was greatly reduced.

'Marketmore' cucumber

I pulled up a couple wasabi radishes and found that while the plants are grown and setting seed, the taproots were no bigger than my little finger.  

They were planted last fall.

Wasabi seed heads

I finally decided to read up on how you're supposed to harvest these things and found out they aren't ready for harvesting until the second year.  I guess I'll just leave them in the ground and see what happens.

The onions are at the stage for harvesting as green onions, and since I planted them waaaay to densely, it's working out that I get the perfect size green onions by thinning the crop.

Of course there's no way I was going to get a year without raccoon damage.  The kids are out before dawn and wreaking havoc wherever they can.

I thought I'd discourage this darling little guy by turning the hose on him before letting him go.  At first he tried to get away from the stream, and then he just started playing with it.  What can you do?

'Hens and chicks' poppy