July Garden Update

[CathyA]

We've had 2 rain-free days!! DH dug a couple big holes in the garden for drainage, which helped a little. I think I've had over 10" of rain in July. The only things that are really growing and not turning yellow are in those stock tanks I'm using. Out of fear of all my in-ground tomato plants dying, I bought 3 larger ones and planted them in a stock tank where the spinach had been. I picked about a cup of snow peas today, which is all I'll be getting this year. My "bright lights" Swiss Chard is doing great in one of the stock tanks and we're having it in a side salad tonight (swiss chard, onions, garlic, olive oil, white balsamic vinegar and toasted walnuts. It's cooked down and delish.
My onions aren't doing very well. My kale is good. My broccoli has "brown bead" disease from too much rain. A couple of the cherry tomato plants I have in 5 gallon pots are about 5' tall now.......but slow to make tomatoes because of all the rain and gloomy days. I may end up moving all my veggie stock tanks into the garden next year, since every year the trees in the back yard get bigger and bigger and there's not enough sun.
(Now don't tell me to cut them down IL!) :~)
How's everyone else's garden doing?

[KayLR]

For the first time i started my tomatoes from seed this year and ended up with 21 plants!! I gave away all but 10. They are determinate, indeterminate, and 3 cherries. I really didn't think I'd be this successful.

We are in a drought here; the driest June on record. So hand watering in the morning only. I have Toscan kale, green beans, 1 spaghetti and 1 acorn squash, 1 cuke, 41 corn plants, carrots, beets, chard, parsley and dill. Herb pots with thyme, cilantro, rosemary, chervil, oregano, chives, basil. Only the herbs have matured enough to harvest---I've dried quite a bit. My lettuce and spinach have come and gone.

Our fruit trees are in their unproductive year...seems every other year they go on strike.

[Tiam]

I'll give you a week of our heatwave for two of your rainy days!

[Gardenarian]

I'll give you a week of our heatwave for two of your rainy days!
Oh, me too!

My garden is primarily experimental this year. New climate, new soil, new pests - well, lots of mistakes and opportunities for learning!

I'm still trying to figure out how to get plants started when the last frost day is May 24 and the temps zoom up into the 90s the first week of June. Apparently most people here start their plants indoors, which I have no experience with.

Anyhow, the things I planted in wine barrels have been the most successful. Maybe I'll put in some deep raised beds - or just get a lot more barrels!

[lessisbest]

We went from monsoon season to blistering heat with temperatures in the high 90's and low 100's F., high humidity and high winds - just in time for wheat harvest (which is all but done in our area). The lettuce was done two weeks ago, but the kale (I have three kinds) is coming out of my ears. I've been dehydrating it and giving it away.

I picked all the pea pods and made a huge batch of Steak and Mushrooms with Pea Pods and have it in the freezer. Now they are gone, but not forgotten.

Cucumbers are the next thing to contend with on a daily basis. That means making Sassy Water every day and making all things possible with cucumbers. I dehydrate a lot of cucumber slices (use as a chip with dip or crumble on a salad), and I also dehydrate the peelings, which is where the bulk of the nutrition is.

I picked my first tomato last Friday. Anything before July 4 is a HUGE bonus. The only tomato plant I have was a free cherry tomato. Due to the high amount of fructans in tomatoes, I can't eat a lot of them, so cherry tomatoes are perfect. I'll freeze and dehydrate most of them. I also remove the skins and dehydrate them to make tomato powder.

As soon as the herbs start growing in the spring, I keep them trimmed and dehydrate most of the early spring growth. Now that it is hot, they are mostly used fresh for cooking/baking. The end of the season, the herbs are picked to use for making flavored vinegars and made into herbed butter (frozen).

[Gardnr]

but the kale (I have three kinds) is coming out of my ears. I've been dehydrating it and giving it away.


Reconsider? Blanch the kale and freeze it. It takes so little space.

I cannot tell you how fabulous it was all winter to put fresh garden kale in my baked pasta dishes all winter long. Think melted cottage cheese over kale with homemade (frozen) ratatouille and some quinoa pasta. OMG my mouth is drooling and I haven't had breakfast yet :~)

[cdttmm]

We picked more strawberries earlier this week, but I think that's the last of them. The blueberries are almost ripe, but I need to get them netted or the birds will get to them long before we do! The apple trees are looking great -- loaded with apples -- but they won't be ready for picking for a few more months. The tomatoes are coming along. The cherry tomatoes are setting fruit like crazy, but the others, not so much. Just gotta give 'em time. The basil is going gangbusters. There will be pesto making in the near future! But the big haul has been honey -- 60 pounds so far and we're just getting started. Woo-hoo!!!:cool:

[KayLR]

I forgot to mention our blueberries. We only have 3 bushes, and each one ripens at a different time, fortunately. The middle one is bearing right now, quite large berries. We netted ours when they began flowering.

For those of you who make pesto with your basil, do you know of any lower-fat recipes? I have a ton of basil right now, too.

[SteveinMN]

Real late into the season, but I was given some seeds as a gift this year -- collard greens and Hubbard squash. Here is their progress so far, before today's watering and before weeding. I should get to more feeding and some more mulch this week. The zucchini along the fence is our neighbor's.

Long shot of garden patch: http://i60.tinypic.com/1585tnc.jpg
Collards (sample): http://i57.tinypic.com/oh62l5.jpg
Squash (sample): http://i60.tinypic.com/hrdb9l.jpg

I don't get out every day and I tend to follow the timeworn advice for pulling weeds: If it comes out of the ground easily, it's not a weed, it's avaluable plant. I'm also hoping that critters decide to much on the weeds, not the food, but acccording to the collard plants, I'm not quite winning that battle. Plus I've got three plants right in a row which are flowering right now; I want to identify them since the mulch was the contents of our compost bin, so it's very likely a food or fruit we like to eat. Bonus!

[CathyA]

My pole beans look awful, so I'm going to try to replant some of them today. I hope it's not too late. I can't believe it's July already. When did that happen?
I'm also cleaning out a bunch of stuff in the back yard. Over the years, I've planted "islands" of flowers......which quickly became islands of weeds. I'm tearing out all the weeds, then transplanting the flowers in the Fall (mostly coneflower) to one spot that already has coneflowers. Then, we can just mow the areas instead of looking at all those weed-islands all the time. I guess I'm at the age where I just can't keep up with all my younger-days dreams. I've planted way too many bushes and flowers all over the place, and now I'm just wanting to simplify. What good is all this stuff if it's just a big weight on your back? So I'm excited that I'm at the point where I actually can get rid of some things and make the yard simpler.....and actually prettier too.
Okay.........it's back outside I go. I'm just SOOOOOO grateful for several dry days. Feels like forever since we've had them. (Sorry for you folks always praying for rain!).

[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. http://www.simplelivingforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1512&stc=1

[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.