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.

Hot, hot, hot ... and dry

So I'm back from my two weeks away, and the garden is overgrown with weeds. Some vegetables didn't survive (there was .6" rain in my gauge), but the garden is a riot of color, and the roses have absolutely outdone themselves.  

'Zepherine Douhin'

'Shazam!'

'Razzle Dazzle'

'Neptune'

left to right: 'Grande Amore', 'South Africa', 'Shazam!'

foreground: 'Neptune'

Hollyhocks only had buds when I left.

After a couple applications of dicamba, I've finally managed to get rid of weeds and crabgrass in the paths around the flower plots.  I'll seed the bare ground this fall.

Some vegetables didn't get nearly enough water.  Peas are scraggly and drying out.  Kohlrabi that wasn't shaded by adjacent rhubarb has burnt leaves.

Five cucumber plants dried up and died.  Only two survived.  Fortunately, one of them is the new variety I'm trying this year - 'Beit Alpha'.  And the other is my staple 'Marketmore'.

Most lettuce is ready to bolt.  'New Red Fire' has matured to nearly all green.

I really like the variety 'Rouxai', a new one for me.  It may well be a new one for everyone.  The seed was expensive.   The leaves are a beautiful dark wine. 

I only have a few plants (the ones below were nearly lost in weeds), so I'm going to let them go to seed and have a bigger stand next year.  That is, if they're come true to seed, and they might not.

The arugula stand is quite lush.

Baby beets, arugula, and, surprisingly, the cantaloupes look fine.  I imagine it's because they get a certain amount of dappled shade under a mimosa tree.

The 'Savor' cantaloupe plants that were scrawny when I put them in are smaller than the small Persians, which was expected, but the plants look healthy now.

'Savor'

Small Persian cantaloupe

The weeds have had a two-week-long party.

'Calima' bush beans infested with purslane

I weeded the lettuce plot and the bean & pea plot this morning.  It took me 4 hours.  The picture below shows the difference in weeded vs not yet weeded halves.

Peppers look pretty awful, but they're alive.

Jalapeño peppers

sweet snack bells

The 'Seaside' spinach is bolting, so I sowed more seed.  It's got a nice flavor and texture.

I've got a LOT more work to do, but the flowers are making it tolerable.

Tiger swallowtail on butterfly milkweed

 

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.