Summer Days in the Garden

When the daytime highs reach the mid-nineties, (mid-thirties C), something in me switches to pick-and-preserve mode. It just seems like that's what I ought to be doing, and it is!

We're enjoying fresh steamed beans & I'm canning
canning as many as I can. These are Tendergreens.

Summer squash is doing well. I only have about 3 or 4
plants because we all know how prolific it can be!

I've tried a number of varieties over the years, but the standard
yellows seem to do best. Love these sauteed with onion & basil.

I planted cushaw for winter squash where I planted clover as a
living mulch. Cushaw has always done well for me, although
the clover is beginning to wilt from the hot dry weather.

I have two varieties of tomatoes, Homestead and
a  Roma type. The Romas are struggling with
anthracnose, unfortunately, which seems to be
a recurring problem for me with paste types.

I have one row of sweet potatoes that seem happy. For the past couple
years, however, I've grown my own slips and never gotten very many.
I'm not sure why, but would honestly love about 4 - 6 times as many.

Okra is a favorite and doing well. We eat it
oven fried and it freezes without blanching.

Lots of cucumbers too! We're eating plenty fresh
and I'm restocking my shelves with lots of pickles.

My several rows of popcorn are doing well. 

Field corn. Half of the patch has done well, the other
half has no ears! I suspect nitrogen deficiency. I
plan to cut those plants back and dry for stover.

Amaranth has only done so-so. This is a
feed crop for me so the more the better.

No shows for me this year have been Swiss chard, which I planted twice! No joy with watermelons either. I had half a dozen indoor starts that didn't make it, and neither did the seeds I planted directly in the ground to replace them.

In the fruits and nuts department, we had no peaches or almonds this year, even though there were plenty of blossoms! No strawberries either, because I lost all my plants in last summer's horrific heat and drought. The apple harvest will be okay, although less abundant than last year.

This Gala is still a little green but has good flavor.

Pear trees have produced only a few, so I'm not expecting much of a harvest there. A first this year will be my Japanese persimmon!

First time for fruiting this year, four of them!

I planted it in my first hedgerow two years ago and confess I haven't given it a lot of nurturing. It's had to struggle on it's own but it's survived and beginning to produce! We have a wild persimmon too, but it's so tall that the only way to get fruit is the ones that fall to the ground. Critters both tame and wild keep the area pretty well cleaned up, however, so there's never any left for us. Even so, those fruits are small compared to the Japanese variety!

Another first will be crabapples.

I'm thinking pectin and jelly!

This is the first year I've gotten more than only 5 or 6 of them!

Blueberries and figs are my old faithfuls.

Even though it's been cooler this summer and with more
rain, the blueberries haven't produced as well as last year.

Figs are usually ready for harvest in August.

So there's my mid-summer garden report. How about you?

Summer Days in the Garden © July 2017 

by Leigh  at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Mid-Summer Garden Report

June was very hard on the garden with daytime highs in the mid to upper 90s (30s C) and only seven-eights inch of rain since mid-May. I spent most days using our wood chips to mulch. I used our collected rainwater to water the beds, dressed with compost, and then applied a thick layer of mulch. I worked in small sections because when the air is that hot and dry, moisture evaporates right out of the ground. I've been able to keep most of of the garden alive, but it struggles.

Still, I have some nice photos to show you, although production has slowed down and much of the garden seems stunted. Cantaloupes, for example are small, and have stopped flowering.

Cantaloupe and bush beans.

But they've been tasty. Green beans are slow too, and I've only been able to can six quarts so far.

Sweet potatoes and marigolds

My 3 rows of okra don't seem to be growing at all.

In one of the old, unkempt beds of the garden I discovered several
clumps of multiplier onions that escaped being harvested last fall.

Cucumbers and dill along a cattle panel
trellis with sunflowers in the background.

Most of the cucumbers have been bitter from the lack of water,

but the plants are loaded with flowers and honeybees.

Honeybees visit the sunflowers too.

The next two rows of trellises are tomatoes, along with more dill, sweet basil, and multiplier onions.

Sam keeps me company while I work in the garden. He has tomato
plants on the left and Jerusalem artichokes behind him on the right.

Tomatoes are just beginning to ripen.

The first of my tomatoes all suffer from blossom end rot. Gardeners know this is caused by a lack of calcium, but it's not necessarily because calcium is lacking in the soil. It can be caused by something interfering with the plants calcium uptake, things like not enough moisture in the soil.

Another place loaded with honeybees is in the popcorn.

Last year I was rather unceremoniously corrected by a number of people when I mentioned that I looked forward to our bees helping pollinate the corn. Corn is wind pollinated, which of course is true, but having seen bees in my corn in the past I added corn to the list of plants my bees would help. It would have been more correct to say that the corn helps the bees rather than the bees help the corn.

Honeybee busy collecting pollen in the popcorn. The grain-like
 things are called "anthers," and they bear pale yellow corn pollen.

My bees have been busy in the popcorn stuffing their pollen baskets! And if they happen to knock down some of the pollen laden anthers which fall on the tassels, I won't complain.

Popcorn tassels. Each strand is a potential corn kernel.

A dry summer is hard on honeybees because less is blooming, so there is less nectar and pollen for them to live on. When that's the case they must utilize their honey stores, which can mean a smaller honey harvest in the fall.

Unfortunately we cannot collect enough water to water everything. I focus on the garden, but other things like fruit trees and bushes suffer.

Blueberries waiting to ripen

July is my month to harvest blueberries. The bush is loaded but the berries are small. Without enough water they will remain small and not be sweet and juicy when they ripen. Rain is in the forecast, though, so here's hoping.

Mid-Summer Garden Report © July 2016 

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Garlic, Raspberries, and More

June means...

garlic harvest,

the beginning of raspberry season,

green tomatoes,

apples blushing,

elders blooming,

popcorn needing weeding,

peaches almost ready (I should have thinned them!),

first picking of green beans imminent,

and a bowlful of wild blackberries.

What does June mean to you?

Garlic, Raspberries, and More © June 2016 

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Go With The Flow Gardening

Last month I showed you my popcorn patch, which seemed to be loaded with more volunteer amaranth than popcorn plants. The other day I went out to weed that patch, but I could find only two seedling popcorns. That was disappointing. Popcorn isn't a gardening essential, but I do like having it for an homegrown treat. I considered pulling all the amaranth and replanting the popcorn, but then it occurred to me that if the amaranth wanted to grow there, why not? The entire amaranth plant is a useful food for our animals, so why try to plant it elsewhere when it was happy here?

Volunteer amaranth mulched with old straw

While mulching, I found another volunteer in that patch.

Volunteer Nutmeg melon

There are a couple of these nutmeg melon plants staking their claim there as well. I usually only grow one variety of melon each year to avoid cross pollination for simpler seed saving - last summer it was nutmeg, this year it was to be cantaloupe. But who am I to argue?

If only the rest of the garden could be this easy.

Go With The Flow Gardening © June 2015
by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Ah Yes, The Garden

The biggest gardening challenge this year has been the rain. We've had over 45 inches of rain so far this year, 22.65 inches of it since the beginning of April, when summer planting begins. In the negative column, it means late planting and mud, mud, mud. On the other hand, it means everything is growing like gangbusters, including the weeds. Here's a photo tour...

Popcorn, volunteer chicory, and volunteer parsnip flowers

Popcorn with orange cushaw winter squash, sugar beets in front

The last of the spring lettuce and strawberries

Winter lettuce flowering for seed & multiplier onions flowering too
Volunteer marigolds behind them and flax behind that (closeup below)

I wish I'd gotten a shot of the entire flax bed in bloom. They are
making seed pods now. Heirloom volunteer marigolds in front.

I had a good harvest of Pink Beauty radishes

I've just started harvesting cabbage and making cole slaw. I've had very
little insect damage, just what you see here. I wish I'd planted more. 

My potatoes are plagued with blight. I harvest them as they die back, even in the
mud. These are destined to become potato salad to accompany chevon burgers.

Swiss chard (mostly for the goats) and volunteer 4 o'clocks front right.

Spring peas drying on the cattle panel trellis (lower left), with the first
cucumber flower and more volunteer 4 o'clocks ( AKA Marvel of Peru)

Also in the trellis bed, volunteer dill, on which the peas haven't minded growing

Funny, how nice my garden looks through the eye of the camera. When I go out there, all I see are the pathways overrun with grass of various varieties and overgrown plantain. I see the wiregrass taking over and everything that needs to be weeded and mulched.

I mention volunteers in quite a few captions. As part of my work-smarter-not-harder companion bed planting, I tend to let all volunteers grow where they may. Sometimes I'm just curious to see how well they'll do with their new neighbors. Mostly, I find that volunteers are usually hardier than the seed I plant myself. Most importantly, I know that if the ground isn't growing something I want, then it will grow something I don't want! Those heirloom marigolds cover the entire walkway between two beds, and create a living mulch. Not much else is growing there with the added benefit (besides being pretty) that when planted in beds, those marigolds help deter nematodes.

I'm still hoping to get a few more things in the ground. And soon, it will be time to begin fall planting. Amazing how time flies, isn't it?

Ah Yes, The Garden © June 2013 

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/