July Garden Update

[awakenedsoul]

I'm really excited about my vegetable garden this year. It looks really healthy. I've got several green tomatoes on the vine. The squash plants are doing well, and for the first time my corn looks like it will be successful. I planted the "three sisters"...(corn squash, and green beans) together. It really seems to work. I've also got a couple of melon plants and lots of herbs. I've lost a few fruit trees due to the drought, but all in all, the garden looks terrific. I didn't plant until a few weeks after Easter, so I won't be harvesting for a few more weeks.

Hope you get more dry weather, CathyA.

[CathyA]

So how are things going by now? We've had almost a week without rain! I've actually had to water my stock tank gardens, but it's supposed to rain later today, so I'm not watering anything in the ground. I did replant some pole beans about 5 days ago. They are one of the earlier producing varieties, so hopefully the Fall will be long enough. (That is assuming the monsoon rains won't return).
My tomatoes are still pathetic, but I'll probably get about 3-4 tomatoes off each plant. That's better than nothing! My cucs seemed to weather the heavy rains the best of anything and they are just now starting to make cucumbers. What has done the best are the cherry tomatoes that are in containers. Everything in my 5 stock tank containers has done well, but I definitely have to add twice as much soil in them for next year. The soil/compost I put in them has shrunk a bunch.

I think my big garden will die earlier than usual, which is probably best, 'cause the compacted soil is going to take a lot of work before the winter. I have a big tiller that I haven't used in about 20 years, and I don't have the strength to get it going again, so we'll just do our best with our little Mantis. The soil is like cement, since we walked on it a lot when it was wet.

Have been enjoying an occasional Swiss Chard salad, which is really good.
I bought about 20# of blueberries from the store and froze them. I made some no-cook strawberry jam today.....which I will talk about in the Food forum.
I would love to make Elderberry jelly again some time. It's a very dark, rich flavor........but the birds get the berries while they are still green. I won't use bird netting, as the birds get caught in it. If I were starving, I'd use it, but I'm not.....

I'm very sad that my Waltham butternut squash didn't grow this year. It's sooooo good and healthy and we love eating it through the winter. Oh well......maybe next year.
So what's happenin' in your garden now?

[nswef]

I only plant tomatoes, some carrots and we have lots of blueberries. The blueberries did very well. Tomatoes are ripening so I have a net over them to block Bubba the groundhog...My main garden is flowers and I have been catching up on those beds today. So now I am going to get some ice and aleve. I'm am impressed with all the huge produce production in this group.

[catherine]

Beautiful garden, nswef!

Our garden needs a good clean-out at this point. Our tomatoes are doing well, but our lettuce is past and our cucumbers and squash are just going wherever the heck they want to go, so we have to train them a bit.

However, the cucumbers are delicious!! We cut them up and put them in a little salt and vinegar, and I'm eating them like candy.

We're going to re-seed some spinach tomorrow.

Flowers are fine but a lot of dead-heading to do. Typical mid-summer grooming session is definitely in order.

[CathyA]

Very nice nswef!

[iris lilies]

Pretty border, nswef!

I feel so sorry for DH. We are overrun with squirrels and they are picking everything. They have stripped all of the fruit off the trees, their first choice, and have moved on to ground crops. They get a majority of the sweet corn. They have started attacking tomatoes. It's sad, DH spend a lot of time on his fruit trees and the nasty little creatures are so destructive.

Meanwhile, I am very happy that my iris beds show no sign of leaf spot even though this has been a wet summer.

I've given away 200+ iris plants to random strangers, and then learned that large new beds along the street in my neighborhood need plants. I still have around 100 iris plants for this effort, but they aren't the best and biggest. This is what I live for--large expanses of good soil in full sun for iris!!! Of course people will want to plant other ornamentals in these street side beds since iris blooms only in April and May. But yay! Lots of room for iris!!!

[KayLR]

Squirrels!! I hate 'em. I've used more chicken wire this year to keep them out of my beds. They dig where I've seeded, they dug around my tomato transplants, they chew my flower stems, they bury peanuts that people "feed" them, along with walnuts they gather themselves. I have an elevated trough-like flower bed I planted fall lettuce and chard in...yep, they even climbed up there and dug. It got covered with chicken wire, too.