The Garden in July
Over the past month my garden has transformed: into a hot mess.
July is always a month of tremendous growth in the garden, both for the weeds and the purposeful plants. This year my weeds just happen to be doing espeacially well. I don't get out to the garden often enough, so i usually just do a quick weeding immeadiatly around the other plants in order to give them some space. I call it "weed triage".
Bed #1
The tomatoes are a massive jungle. I never did get those stakes so the plants have just run wild. I have baby tomatoes though, so i'm hoping that in another month I'll just be rolling in the produce.
I got a handful of sugar snap peas from this bed as well, which were amazingly delicious.
The Painted lady runner beans are flowering. prolifically. I've heard that these flowers are edible so I tried a couple. I found them crispy and mildly sweet, I probably wont harvest very many myself, but they might make a good addition to a salad
The cucumbers in this bed are flowering, although the plants themselves are pathetically small. I'll just have to wait and see if we get anything from them or not.
Bed # 2
The squash is being besieged by what might be a single squash vine borer and the beginning of a squash bug infestation. I knew from the beginning that both would be pretty tricky pests for this area.
To combat them I'm mainly depending on resistant varieties, and lots of flowers (to attract bud predators). So far the plants are holding on, although a sweetmeat (the only non-resistant variety I planted) perished almost immeadiatly when a squash vine borer moved in. An acorn squash was next but it seems to be much more vigorous
... not that I didn't try to find and kill the thing.
In other news: I have baby Acorn Squash!
Bed # 3
The mint has been producing reliably for a little over a month now. Right now, we're mainly drying it, but we might try some more adventurous things soon.
This bed is much emptier than I was origonally planning, and the weeds have really taken over. I don't really plan on clearing them out though.
A nice thick groundcover is actually good for the garden. It adds organic matter to the soil, while aerating it, it also stops the soil and the nutrients from washing away, provides a habitat for beneficial insects, and stops the ground from getting too hot. The flowers on the weeds looks pretty, and attract pollinators to my garden.
So the weeds get to stay, and I simply try to keepe them from competeing too much with my main crops.
Bed # 4
Something is eating the leaves of my potato plants. I suspect earwigs. Luckily, you don't eat the leaves, so as long as they still produce I don't really care. One variety does seem to have fewer gnaw marks on it so i might plant more of those next year. I think they might be the fingerlings, but we'll know for sure at the end of the season.
The blue garden peas have held on longer than I thought they would. Although the pods are definitely purple, not blue. Which is only slightly more dissapointing than it should be.
The beans still have nothing to grow on, but they seem to be making due with the sunflowers I put everywhere.
Potted Plants
Gwendolyn tore up my purple carrot seedlings so she could play with the soil. Which was the same fate as all of my sweet pepper seedlings.
I only felt like crying a little.
Instead of planting more carrots I decided to plant another bean and a nasturtium. It was probably too late, but this way I might not have to worry about cross polination as much.
The Teschchin Yazyk Tomato plant is finally producing baby tomatoes. It was planted a month later than the Amish Paste in the main garden, but only seems to be slightly behind in production. If the taste is good, I'll definitely try them again next year.
The Melon "Rich Sweetness 132" has a baby melon on it! And it has three more female flowers! I'm really excited about this plant, because it seems like so much fun. I also have a niece and nephew who are inordinately fond of melons.
Most important garden lesson: Sweet Meat Squash doesn't do well here. Butter Nut, and Table Queen acorn squash seem to be doing better.
Most Important Gardening Tasks:
I need more mulch around the potatoes and other places that have become more bare. I also need to hand polinnate the squash soon if I'm going to save seeds this year.
It's also about time to plant carrots and peas again if i want a fall crop.
