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| Baby peppers on potted pepper plant |
Sunday, July 16, 2023
We are harvesting tomatoes, peppers, summer squash, snap beans, lima beans, eggplant, herbs, onions, lettuce, Red Malabar spinach, New Zealand spinach, Chinese Multi Color Spinach amaranth, Love Lies Bleeding amaranth, and sprouting broccoli. Petunias, zinnias, fairy lilies, daylilies, marigolds, lantana, gardenia, Love Lies Bleeding, Cock's Comb are all blooming. We are in a moderate drought so are having to water the pots 2-3 times per week and the garden beds weekly.
We have had spells of warmer than normal temperatures in mid spring followed by cooler than usual temperatures in May. Peppers, eggplant, beans, and squash are all behind where they normally are for this time of year.
I just started getting baby eggplants and squash. I bought a Japanese eggplant transplant and I have harvested one fruit off of it and there are 2 more that are close. One of the eggplants I started from seed is flowering and has a baby eggplant on it, Daimaru. The others I started from seed are almost big enough to start flowering. I started getting summer squash from the volunteers that came up at the end of June. The summer and winter squash I started from seed have baby fruits on them.
I got some snap Blauhilde beans and Christmas Speckles lima beans, but the vines are currently not producing or flowering. The winged bean and 1500 Year old bean vines have yet to flower this season.
I had to restart my cucumber seeds 3 times. The latest seedling is growing very well and I expect to see flowers and fruits soon.
The Ancho pepper plants have fruits but the sweet pepper plants have not flowered yet. The cayenne and Chipetlin that I overwintered in the basement have been producing regularly.
Tomatoes are pretty well on schedule this year for fruits. Got our first ones last month and production has been pretty steady since the Fourth of July. I have flowers and tomatoes on all the plants except the Brandywine. My tomato plants don't look very busy, but are producing. I am getting several ripe ones each day. I think I have voles in my garden beds. Their tunneling destroys root systems and they like to eat roots! I had one plant that looked like it was going to die but it is recovering. My Chocolate Lightning dwarf has had a tomato on it for weeks and was dark green and bushy. Now whole sections of the plant are wilting. Probably the voles. I read that voles do not like coffee grounds so I am now putting all our grounds around each tomato plant and when I dig into a vole tunnel, I add grounds into each tunnel before I close back up. Fingers crossed this works!
I do have 4 seedlings that I started late. It is always a good idea to have 2 plantings of tomatoes if you want to have alot of tomatoes. As the early plants start dying back, you can count on the younger plants to pick up the slack.
My husband is growing his upside down in 5 gallon buckets with an auto watering system and fertilizer spikes to keep it as maintenance free as possible. He was given 6 plants from a neighbor that thought they were beefsteak, purchased 3 Brandywines and 1 Black Prince. He has gotten lots of cherry tomatoes, both red and yellow ones, 2 from the Black Prince, and so far none from the Brandywines. One of the Brandywine's has a huge green fruit on it, but it just doesn't seem to want to ripen yet. Brandywine tomatoes have about the longest "days to harvest" of any tomato plant at 100 days so not surprising it is the last one to produce.
His system is working well. His plants are staying green and are fuller than the ones I am growing in the garden. His started getting yellow leaves in the last couple of weeks but that is not unusual as tomatoes lower leaves won't be getting as much sun as upper leaves grow.
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| Oregano in bloom |
Our basil isn't very big yet. I transplanted them late as it took forever for them to take off after sprouting with the cool May we had. Probably be at least a couple of weeks before I can do my first harvest for pesto making. They should still regrow to give me at least one more good harvest before fall. Basil basics-harvesting, preserving, growing basil
Oregano is in bloom. The bees love the purple flowers! I need to check to see which herbs I need to dry to make my herb blend before summer is over. I use this blend on/in everything from sauces to eggs to grilled chicken. Harvest and preserve your herbs
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| Lettuce gone to seed |
I fertilized all the pots again as well as the veggies in the garden first using Epsom dry fertilizer and a couple weeks later, Jobe all natural fertilizer spikes. It is good to fertilize pots biweekly and garden plants monthly during the growing season to give them the nutrition they need to produce well. The fertilizer spikes are slower release so hopefully this round will get me through the season. Summer edible garden tips
Most of the lettuce has gone to seed. When you see the white fuzzies, they are ready to save. I just pull the seed heads, break apart, put in a ziplock freezer bag, label with type and date, and store in the refrigerator. You can also leave them on the plant and you will get volunteer lettuce plants. This year, I am being lazy and just either bending the seed heads over a pot that I want to get more lettuce going or cutting the seed head off and putting it into a pot to re-seed my pots. It takes a couple of weeks for them to be of baby lettuce size to harvest. I have several seedlings coming up.
Succession planting of lettuce and planting types that are resistant to bolting can keep your lettuce crop going. Plant them in the coolest part of the yard where they are not in full sun all day and get shade in the afternoon. Pots are a good option to be able to move them to the cooler part of the yard. Growing summer salads Bolt-free, sweet summer lettuces
You may have to start the seeds indoors this time of year because lettuce doesn't germinate very well if soil temperatures are about 70-75 degrees F. Never ending salad from one packet of seeds Seed saving-fun, easy and a cost saver
In the greens department, summer is a hard time for the most common crops we grow for salads. Sprouting broccoli, some lettuce, different types of sorrel, leafy cabbage, sweet leafy mustards, amaranth, sprouting broccoli, arugula, dandelion greens, chard, lettuce, kale, cress, orach and herbs are all options. The heat increases the sharpness of most of the traditional greens.
I added a couple of varieties of greens that have a similar taste to spinach and lettuce a few years ago. Red Malabar spinach, New Zealand spinach, sprouting broccoli, and Hilton Chinese cabbage are now staples in my summer greens garden. They are not true spinach or lettuce but have similar flavor and are heat tolerant. They don't get bitter in the heat.
If you have extras of chard, dandelion greens, sprouting broccoli, sorrel, sprouting broccoli, kale or cabbage, you can blanch and freeze them for steamed winter greens. Freezing the extras for winter
The annual flowers are doing well in the garden right now. They attract all kinds of beautiful butterflies and moths as well as bees. I love watching all the bees and butterflies that are visiting the garden.
Key chores to keep the summer garden producing is to pick often, make sure plants have even moisture, keep ahead of pests, and give the plants the nutrition they need to keep going.
This time of year, it is so nice to be able to walk through the garden and pick what is ripe for dinner and watch the garden grow.
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