Garden Realities: July

July was a great month for us this year. It just wasn't great for for my gardens. We had one family reunion at the beginning of the month, house sat for a few days, then We flew to Washington for a wedding and another family reunion. So we were away from home and garden for essentially the entire month.

It was a fantastic blast the whole way.I'm glad to get Gwendolyn back to schedules and proper bedtimes for sure though.

I came home to find an amazing surge of growth in both my gardens. The poor un-pruned tomatoes had a ton of green fruit on them, and my singular surviving melon plant had sprawled out appreciably.

The Sunflowers in the house share garden are spectacular. They're mostly on the thin side, but many are at least seven feet tall. Most of them have have multiple blooms, which I love. There's no sign of the mutated blooms though, but they could be a recessive trait and I'm sure that last year the flowers were mainly cross-pollinated. So I could end up with those funny and cute flowers next year instead.

On the other hand almost all the sunflowers in my community garden have flopped over. I'm fairly certain that is because of the way I planted them. When I laid down the cardboard and straw to smother weeds I planted my seedlings on top with a little bit of dirt. I poked some holes in the cardboard for the roots, but it doesn't appeared to have been enough. The ones I have pulled out have had sad stunted roots which were mainly on top of the weed barrier.

The single sunflower that has remained upright in this garden is something to behold. It's over ten feet tall, has a few side blooms, and one medium main bloom. It's stalk is as big as my bicep*. Still, I think it was just lucky, so this year I'm going to select from the thickest, longest and healthiest plants whether or not they've fallen over. Next year, when I've planted smarter, I'll select for standing power.

The single cherry tomato in this garden is doing really well. There are over a hundred of little green fruits, some of which as started to ripen. There also isn't any sign of pests or diseases, even though I've been letting it sprawl over the ground willy-nilly. It's really a good little plant.

I don't actually like fresh tomatoes at all, but it's a goal of mine to start enjoying cherry tomatoes this year. So in the next week or so it will be time to start experimenting with eating them.

.... ew.

Everything else is just a little bit sad about my gardens. I haven't been able to fill any of the empty space yet, so things just look a tiny bit pathetic. My long absence has also let the weeds creep in. I know I shouldn't compare myself to others, but my plot is the dumbest looking in the community garden.

I mean, look at this awesome thing. I don't even know what it is, but I love it.

Plus there have been a couple crop failures. At the end of June I had gotten a handful of chamomile flowers, When I visited at the end of July all of my chamomile plants had turned to seed. I just missed the season.

Additionally my mint isn't doing very well. I'm not sure what's up. I mean, who can't grow mint?

Luckily there's still time to do some winter/fall planting. There's short season things like peas, radishes and lettuces that I can start on now. Since I know that I can have the same community plot next year I can also plant mint again, so that I can have nice healthy plants in the spring. I also really want to try overwintering some garlic this year.

So how are your gardens? Any plans for the fall?