Late, late summer

I'm still harvesting a few things from the garden while waiting for the new peas and salad greens to be ready.  Mostly what I have to offer in this post are flowers, but I'll be gone for a couple weeks, and I imagine the garden will have changed quite a bit in that time, so I'm posting what I have now.

My sundial never got calibrated this year.

That was like a police report, wasn't it?  "A bullet struck and killed..." Passive voice.  More accurately, I should have said:  I never calibrated my sun dial this year.

The volunteer melons that came up with the cucumbers on the trellis performed better than the plants I set out on cages intentionally.  There are still a couple growing that I hope are ripe when I return in a couple weeks.  Or at least still there.

My poor 'Fall Gold' raspberries are struggling, but I can't let them die out.  They're so unique.  They taste like they're dipped in honey.  And they're hard to find without ordering. Ordering live plants is kind of hit and miss in my experience.  I found the one I have at an end-of-the-year sale at Orscheln farm supply. I once found a pot of them at a nursery for $75.  They're good, but not THAT good if you're not made of money, which I most definitely am not.  

While 'Profusion Apricot' zinnias (Zinnia marylandica) are short growing (12-18" high), they're cheerful, rapidly going through a series of color changes as each bloom progresses.  They produce lots of blooms and don't need to be deadheaded, which is another plus.

Even though it's been a very dry year this year, it's been a good year for the roses.  I've not watered them much at all.  I AM battling aphids again this year, but I'm more successful than last year.  Possibly because I caught them early and have been spraying them with Sevin every single day for the past week or so.  (Frowny face.)

left: 'South Africa', right: 'Shazam!'

'Shazam!'

'Shazam!'

Offered without comment:

Early summer vegetable progression

Although my original plan for this blog was to grow and discuss vegetables, most of my posts in the last year or two have been about flowers.  

This post is going to be all about vegetables.  (And berries.)

I grew some long sweet peppers from seed I collected from a grocery store pepper.  They're nice and long, good sized, but haven't yet colored up.  They should mature as red peppers.  I have a feeling they're going to fall short of the store bought ones in quality because we have been in such a dry spell for so long.  I've watered the garden well twice during this long heat spell, but I think that still won't be enough for nice thick-walled peppers.

I also planted some chilis, jalapeños and short sweet peppers.  All are fruiting, and all are still green.

Jalpeño peppers

Thankfully, even with the incredible heat we've been having, I do have some tomatoes that set fruit.  I've read tomatoes will only ripen at temperatures between 50° and 80° F, so these may take a very long time to get to harvest.

'German Johnson'

My pink celery didn't grow any larger stalks than all my previous green celery, but like the green ones, it has a nice strong celery flavor.  I've let it flower, and I'll try and collect the seed for future planting.

Still no fruits on the cucumber plants, but they're flowering nicely and climbing the makeshift trellis I created out of pliable forsythia limbs early in the year.

'Marketmore' cucumber

I plant okra every other year when the farmland abutting my garden is sown in corn.  (The alternate years it's in soybeans which attract hordes of Japanese beetles, and they also infest okra.)  I direct sow both the okra and cucumber seeds, and while it's recommended to soak okra seeds overnight before planting, I don't bother.  I just keep the soil from drying out until they sprout, and I haven't had any trouble.

This year's variety is 'Carmine Splendor'.  I recently harvested a half-dozen pods, so they'll be coming on strong now.  

I've grown several varieties over the years, and the red ones are my favorite.  They're always tender, with a lovely size and shape. Plus, they're pretty plants.  All varieties have been harvestable by the first week of July.  'Jing Orange' was a tall variety, and this year and last, I planted a short variety, 'Carmine Splendor'.  Tall is nice for the fact that you don't have to bend over to harvest, but they got very large, taking up a lot of space and resulting in a lot of plant material to clear after the season was over.  I prefer this compact variety.

'Carmine Splendor'

I had a couple of varieties of cabbage selected to grow this year, but failed to get the seed, so I just started what I had left over from last year: red 'Omero' and green 'Primo Vantage'.

The 'Omero' didn't grow or produce well last year, and I thought maybe I had just transplanted them too early or too densely.  I corrected for that this year, but they're behaving pretty much the same way.

You can see the difference in the varieties in the following pictures:

 

Green 'Primo Vantage' and red 'Omero' cabbages

'Omero'

'Primo Vantage'

Winter killed one of my three raspberry varieties: 'Latham Red'.  The other two, 'Glencoe' and 'Fall Gold' survived, but certainly aren't flourishing.  A few 'Glencoe' recently ripened and were tasty, but they were very small and shattered when picked.  I think I recall them doing the same last year.  'Fall Gold' hasn't yet set any fruit.

My 'Navajo' blackberry bushes started out beautifully, and then one day after I got back from a week away, I went out and found much of it broken down.  I don't if there was a microburst storm event, because there apparently was a storm while I was away, but I suspect raccoons.  They do so much damage.  Nevertheless, there are a good many berries on the plants, and four of them have ripened.  They were delicious.

I don't know when we'll ever pass out of this heat, hovering around 90° every day; I just hope August isn't even hotter.  I'm not going to count on it.

Are these the dog days?

Whatever they are, they're good for the garden.

The Charentais melons are still looking great.  I hope I actually get some melons before the raccoons do.  This will be the test for planting them amongst marigolds.

Charentais melon

The 'Marketmore' cucumbers are also looking good, and I've been harvesting one to three a day for about a week.

For some reason, cucumbers are the absolutely easiest fruit to miss amongst the leaves, even if the leaves don't seem that dense, as this giant on the left can attest.  They're not so good when they get that big, so I have to toss them.

'Marketmore' is a very nice cucumber that isn't at all bitter, so I've seen no reason to even attempt to grow another kind.

Tatsoi and green beans are coming along beautifully (after the initial bunny-stripping of the beans).  

Tatsoi

'Calima' bush beans

I've planted a row of 'Red Swan' bush beans between those two rows, and they're coming up quite nicely, too.

Compost hill's planting of striped Japonica corn has run its course, but the 'Winter Luxury' pie pumpkins are still having a heck of a year.  I've harvested about 10 already, and there are still a lot more on the vines that have not yet ripened.

half-ripe 'Winter Luxury' pie pumpkin

'Winter Luxury' pie pumpkin

I processed four pumpkins into puree to make pies and soups.  I baked one that I cut in half and scooped out seeds.  It was fine, but the absolute easiest and quickest was the instant pot method.  I chucked whole pumpkins into the pot on a trivet, added a cup of water with each, and pressure cooked on high for 25 minutes.  The skins practically fell off.  Soooo much easier and quicker (and easier on the hands) than the last time I processed pumpkins for pie 30 years ago, when I cut them into small pieces, carved off the rinds and boiled them.

No less messy, however.

While the corn is an ornamental flint type, I did test some for eating. 

You have to get it while the kernels are still young, and even then, they're tiny, tough and chewy.  They taste like corn, but if I were growing corn to eat, I'd choose a sweetcorn variety.

striped Japonica ornamental corn

Also on compost hill, one daisy gourd plant survived the early rabbit and deer feeding.  All I've been able to discover so far is this one gourd.  I hope when I harvest the rest of the pumpkins and clear the hill, that plant will have produced more, so I can see if they change color.

It's aptly named: daisy gourd.

stem end

side view

bottom view

The late-planted poblano peppers I grew from seeds of a grocery poblano are fruiting now.

And I'm harvesting the snack peppers I grew the same way.

My fall-planted peas are growing well, and if I don't forget to spray them with deer and rabbit repellant this evening, maybe I'll actually get to harvest some, unlike my spring crop that the moles ate before they even broke ground.

'Premium' peas

'Premium' peas

Some other harvested crops:

yellow pear tomatoes and early purple Vienna kohlrabi

'Cardinal' (green) and 'Amethyst' (purple) basil

The 'German Johnson' plants, of which I only managed to get two planted (drat!), are putting on fruits now that the hell temperatures of July are gone.  (Back then, a Facebook friend posted: "God, whatever you're cooking, it's done."  ;-D )

Fall cabbages are alive and in not-too-bad shape.

'Omero'

'Primo Vantage'

I've sprayed them with Bt a couple of times to prevent cabbage moth caterpillar feeding, but it looks like somebody found a window in which to snack.

It's hard to NOT eat these 'Fallgold' raspberries before they're completely ripe, because I still have a memory of the taste of them from last year.  Like honey drenched raspberries.

I finally had the time and opportunity this year to work on my paths.  I seeded them with rye and fescue, but of course, the crabgrass is taking over.  At least it looks like grass and not dandelions and clover.

And that gets us over to the flower gardens.

'Pat Austin'

'Winter Sun'

'Razzle Dazzle'

'Our Lady of Guadalupe'

top: 'Shazam!', bottom: 'Our Lady of Guadalupe'

Thankfully, the Japanese beetles haven't been bad this year, but at the moment, I'm battling rose aphids:

They're hard to control, and here's an article that tells you why:  Learn How Aphids Can Quickly Overrun Your Garden

I sprayed them for a few days with Sevin, then switched to the less environmentally detrimental pyrethrin.  I didn't notice them until they'd already produced enough honeydew to cause sooty mold to grow on the leaves.  That's impossible to not notice.

Yech.  

I'll go back to dealing with the aphids and leave you this time with a picture of one of the sweetest roses in the garden...'Our Lady of Guadalupe'.

UPDATE ten days later:

The daisy gourd's color is changing...