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.

Veggies, herbs and flowers

 Photo dump time again...

'Carmine Splendor' okra

'Mammolo' basil

long sweet peppers (will turn red)

green 'Primo Vantage' and red 'Omero' cabbages

'Tasty Bites' cantaloupe

'Savor' French Charentais cantaloupe

'German Johnson' tomatoes and 'Carmine Splendor' okra

'German Johnson' tomato

'Supersweet 100' cherry tomato

'Marketmore' cucumbers

'Stuttgarter' onions

'Tropea' onions

'Carmine Splendor' okra and 'Calima' green beans

'Passionate Shock' daylily

'Scarlet Marie' double daylilly

I finally broke down and upgraded my phone.  It has a fantastic camera with a good telephoto lens and an "erase" function.  To remove something from the picture, you merely click on the item you want to remove and then choose the  "erase" function.  Two - actually, three - clicks and you're done.  In the zinnia picture below, I used it to remove a dead rhubarb leaf from the lower left corner.

Pretty cool.

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.

Flowers, flowers, flowers

All the flowers are blooming beautifully, including vegetable and fruit flowers. There are a few more green beans to harvest, and salad greens, but now I'm just awaiting melons and tomatoes. So this post is more or less another photo dump.

'Tasty Bites' cantaloupe

'Marketmore' cucumber

Left to right: 'Carmine splendor' okra, 'Omero' cabbage, pink celery

cactus zinnias

'Señorita' cactus zinnia

honeybee on corn poppy

honeybees on 'Hens and Chicks' annual poppy

'Neptune' rose

'Ollie Flamingo' daylily

assassin bug on chrysanthemum

hollyhock

I started this blog with a vegetable garden that I arranged in a way so as to be as nice to look at as to eat from.  That's why I called it "The Ornamental Vegetable Garden" - ornamental in the sense that the vegetables were grown as much for an ornamental purpose as a food source.  Now, however, the vegetable plots are about a third of the entire garden I've cultivated, as I've become addicted to the actual ornamentals.  It happened so quickly!