We’ve got ourselves another hot day today. Our high was supposed to be 26C/79F today, but I’m pretty sure we passed that. I can’t say for sure, since I was mowing the lawn at the time.
I’m so thankful that my brother loaned us his smaller riding mower!! I actually got the driveway done!
Well… the edges of it, anyhow. We’ll need his tractor and mower attachment to get the rest.
Whatever the temperature actually turned out to be, the thermometer in the sun room was reading 32C/90F when I was done, which would have been after things started to cool down!
With the heat coming back for the next while, I made sure to give the garden a good watering this morning, then went over it to gather a bit of a harvest.
I wasn’t sure about the corn, so I harvested the ones that looked like they might be ripe – a whole three of them. 😄 After shucking them, I found two of them were still immature. Ah, well.
There were a few more Carminat beans and Dalvay peas ready to pick, and then I decided to see how the Uzbek Golden Carrots were doing. I ended up harvesting the rest of the row I’d started on earlier, except for a couple that looked really small. The other row has the carrots going to seed in it, and I’m going to let them. Carrot seeds don’t last very long, so fresh seed would be good, even though I still have lots. I ended up using some of the peas, beans and carrots in my breakfast, along with one of the cobs of corn I cooked separately and left for other family members to try. My younger daughter doesn’t like to eat corn on the cob because it gets in her teeth, so having just two left works out.
The G Star pattypan squash has squash large enough to harvest – just a couple – but I’m leaving them to get bigger. Another of the 4 plants was blooming this morning, with both male and female flowers, so I made sure to hand pollinate. I also found a new female flower on the Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon to hand pollinate. As for the winter squash, I went through them and took out the squash that were clearly starting to shrivel up. There do seem to be some new Turks Turban squash forming, though, which is neat. We seem to be getting the most of those ones – potentially. It all depends on if the weather holds, and we’re already reaching the middle of August! There’s basically just 3 weeks or so left in our growing season, based on our average last frost date. Not a lot of time for winter squash to grow!
Ah, well. We do what we can, right?
For now, I’m just happy with the little harvests we are managing to get this year.
We have our first beans of the year! The purple Carminat and the green Seychelle pole beans. The one San Marzano tomato I’ve been keeping an eye on was looking ripe, and when I touched it, it fell off the vine on its own. I was even able to grab a small handful of Dalvay shelling peas.
I honestly didn’t think we’d get beans this year, with how much they’ve struggled.
The first female flowers have shown up on the green and yellow zucchini plants.
Whether or not they’ll be properly pollinated and actually form zucchini, we have yet to see. In fact, one of the green zucchini flower buds already looks like it’s going to whither away, as it’s more yellow than green.
I was talking to my mother on the phone last night. After telling me about all the wonderful things about my sister’s garden, she asked me about mine. I know better than to believe she’s actually interested – she does this as an opening to find ways to make sure I know what a failure she thinks I am. Still, I told her about how we planted so many squash and melons, we didn’t have room to plant things like the lettuce my sister brings her, or cucumbers, etc. I even told her about the squash we ended up having to harvest because it broke its own stem.
As we were talking, she started say, in a disapproving tone, how she never grew “quash”, that was something she never did. Meanwhile, she’d already told me about how she used to have so much zucchini. I told her, yes, you did grow squash. Zucchini is squash. She didn’t grow winter squash (though, now that I write this, I think she did eventually grow spaghetti squash at some point), but she did grow summer squash. Then I reminded her of the year she let the zucchini get big, and we had so many giant zucchini harvested, when we stacked them against the wall in the basement, they covered the entire wall in the corner. She laughed as she remembered. As a child, I remember that year very well. We had so many giant zucchini, we eve used some to make Jack O Lanterns that Halloween!
As we talked a bit more about the garden, I mentioned that I had to find a way to support the corn because gusts of wind had blown them flat. She started saying how I’ve had sooo many problems with the garden. Which is sort of true, but I reminded her, she had problems with her garden, too. Did I? she asked, sounding shocked. I told her, she had things fail, too (in fact, some of the times I’ve mentioned a thing that didn’t grow for us, she dismissed it by saying, “oh, that happens sometimes… I’ve had that too…”), and then there were the potato beetles.
Oh, the potato beetles!
I remember, year after year, picking off potato beetles!
My parents grew a LOT of potatoes. Enough to last the winter with 7 of us, plus have enough left to plant in the spring. The potato beetles were absolutely brutal. Some years, my dad even went so far as to buy poison to dust onto the plants to save them, because there were too many for us to be able to pick them off.
Funny. When I mentioned the potato beetles, my mother just laughed – and changed the subject! 😄
Today we’re supposed to reach 24C/75F. As I write this, just past noon, we’re at 21C/70F, with the “real feel” at 25C/77F. I did end up watering the garden this morning, even though it’s not going to be exceptionally hot. Most of it, anyhow. We have so many things growing that need a lot of water. I’m not watering the garlic, though. Those are looking like we can finally start harvesting them. Maybe not today, but soon.
One thing I do want to do today is take some garden tour videos. It’s a bit early, but today is one month before our average first frost date, which is Sept. 10.
Yup. We technically have only 31 days left in our growing season.
I’m still holding out hope that we won’t get frost until later in September, but as I look at the long range forecast, I see it has changed again, and we’re looking at temperatures possibly dropping as low as 3C/37F, even before the 10th.
At the very least, we’ll need to be prepared to protect some things from frost. Most things, like the melons and squash, are just too large to cover, but we should be able to protect the high raised bed, the pepper and eggplant bed, and maybe some of the tomatoes, if it comes to that.
*sigh*
I look forward to when we have a greenhouse.
Meanwhile, I need to get back to working on the cat isolation shelter. The rescue has us booked for some September spays or neuters (depending on what cats we manage to trap), so we’re going to need it. I got nothing done yesterday. While on the call with my mother, I found myself feeling ready to fall asleep. After the call, I quickly finished the blog posts I was working on. I was falling asleep at my keyboard! Once done, I went for a nap, crashed for 3 hours, then woke up still feeling completely groggy and drained. So I made it a day of rest.
Not that I had much choice.
Today’s goal with the isolation shelter: painting and wheels. I’ve gone through our paint cans to see what we have left. Mostly, it’s the bright blue I used to paint the folding table and floating benches.
Hmmm… I should see what is left of the red paint. They are the same type of paint. Maybe I can combine what’s left. I like purple… 😄 It’ll be a while before I can buy more paint, so if I can stretch what we have, all the better. We’re not after winning any beauty contests here!
I’m thinking of painting the cut pieces before putting the shelter together, since it will be difficult to paint it once assembled. Especially on the inside. I plan to start painting one side of the cut frame pieces first, then putting the wheels on the base while the paint dries. Once the wheels are on, I plan to paint the base. By then, it might be long enough that I’ll be able to paint another side of the cut pieces. I know we have paint rollers and pans somewhere, so I’m hoping to use that and make the job get done faster.
Time to go digging around the basement to see if I can find some paint rollers and pans!
Or the sun room…
It’s really hard to keep track of the stuff that we found while cleaning up this place. 😁
I have been aiming to get photos of the developing squash, pumpkins and melons every couple of days, with my hand in the shot for perspective. I was sure I’d last done this a couple of days ago, but once the photos were loaded onto my desktop, and I started doing the Instagram slideshows, I realized the last ones I did were three days so.
Oh, well. Not a big deal!
One thing I did not bother with, this time, was take photos of the drum gourds. There’s been basically no change in those, which suggests to me they’ll probably just dry up and fall off.
Which has happened, and is happening, to some others.
Oh! I just realized I forgot about the Crespo squash again. The bed it’s in is in the East yard, and nowhere near the others. Out of sight, out of mind! I did check it today, and it doesn’t seem to have changed much, but there’s a reason I include my hand in the shots!
We might be seeing a slowdown in the garden for a bit, anyhow. The last couple of nights have actually been cold, and it rained for much of today. As I write this, we’re at 15C/59F, and our high was only 18C/64F. It’s going to start warming up again, starting tomorrow, and get fairly hot over the next week. Nothing like the heat we were dealing with before, but hot enough that the garden should recover from the recent chilly nights! Wind gusts have been a problem, though. A lot of the corn stalks were blown over, some flat to the ground. I added twine supports around the bed, but I don’t know just how badly damaged they were. I’ll find out for sure if the stalks start turning brown and drying up! We’re so close to being able to harvest corn, too.
Anyhow…
If you want to compare with previous photos, you can check out these posts. (Links will open in new tabs, so you don’t lose your place!)
We actually lost one of the melons on this side, but I did include a new one that is getting big enough I’m pretty sure it’ll make it. There’s a few others that are getting bigger, but I’m still not sure about them, yet.
The West facing side doesn’t have as many melons growing on it… yet? I’ve been letting the vines sprawl among the onions on this side, and there may well be some I haven’t found under the leaves.
Next is the pumpkin and drum gourd bed – but no pictures of drum gourds this time.
Yes, one of those that looked like it was drying, finally broke off its stem. There’s one other that I think might be a loss, but we shall see.
The unfortunate thing was the large, round blue squash. It had a board under it, and was leaning against the log frame. When I found it, it had rolled onto its top and was sitting completely upside down. I went to flip it over, and the stem broke right off. I’m pretty sure it was already partially broken from when the squash rolled onto it.
We do seem to have another of the same variety in the other bed, though, so maybe we’ll still get one that fully matures before it’s harvested!
Not only was I pushing back leaves to try and get clear photos of the developing squash, but I also had to carefully lift the corn stalks that had been blown over, on top of them!
Last of all is the second melon bed, East side first.
On the West facing side, the single Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon hasn’t even dropped its blossom yet. I’m not seeing any other female flowers developing.
The rest seem to be doing quite fine and getting bigger.
Looking at the long range forecast, it seems that August will continue to be comfortably hot, right into the beginning of September. We might get away with no frost until the end of September. One can hope! I’ll take very frost free day we can get.
While driving around today, though, I heard on the radio that we are coming into a La Nińa winter. Which, for our area, translates into a cold and rainy fall, and a bitterly cold winter.
Like we need another one of those.
We were spoiled by last winter’s mild El Nińo winter, that’s for sure!
Well, we shall see what we get. I just really, really want the cold to hold off long enough for all these melons, pumpkins and squash to fully mature, after having such a late start this spring!
While checking on the winter and summer squash, I’m always on the lookout for any female flowers. I want to make sure to hand pollinate them, just to be on the safe side. Especially on a cooler, wet morning like today, when the pollinators aren’t really out much.
This morning, I found two winter squash blossoms to hand pollinate! There are so many male flowers blooming all the time, it’s quite the thing to find a lady in the mix.
I was both happy and frustrated to find one on the G-Star patty pan squash this morning.
There was one, big beautiful flower blooming, with a strong and healthy looking baby squash at the base.
The problem is, there isn’t a single male flower blooming. I could even see another little female flower bud developing, but no male flowers. The only other squash blossoms around are winter squash, and I don’t think using the would work!
Hmm… maybe I can find some male flowers from the green and yellow zucchini plants. They’ve have male flowers, but no female flowers. I think they might be similar enough for pollination to happen.
There are no plans to save seeds, so cross pollination isn’t the issue. I would just like for pollination to happen so the existing squash will actually develop, and not just turn yellow and fall off!
A single Albion Everbearing strawberry, in the bed that was eaten by deer! The strawberry plants are slowly recovering and blooming, and we have out first strawberry since the destruction. I am really impressed with these strawberries!!
Other than this, there was another tiny harvest of shelling peas, and that’s it. The developing pole beans won’t be ready to harvest for a while, and the bush beans are just starting to open most of their flowers.
I also had to add some support to the Black Cherry tomatoes in the wattle weave bed. I’m doing next to no pruning, mostly because I can’t see into the foliage very well. I know myself well enough to realize I’m as likely to accidently break the main stem while trying to break off any suckers. The plants, including suckers, has gotten so tall, it’s well into the lilac branches above them.
Some of the suckers, however, can’t quite reach, because they’re falling sideways under their own weight. All they needed was for some jute twine to be run around the whole row, with the ends of the twine fastened to branches of the lilac at one end.
So far, we have only one San Marzano tomato ripening. All the other tomatoes have plenty of fruit growing, but everything is still very green.
My family will be very happy once those cherry tomatoes start to ripen!
Me; I’d just like to have some summer squash and beans to harvest!
I was able to get some progress mowing the southeast yard. I was stopping and starting a lot to empty the bag. The area I was mowing is not infested with creeping Charlie, so the clippings went directly for mulch of the strawberry and asparagus bed, and around the sunchokes.
I’d gotten through maybe 2/3 of the southeast yard when I ran out of gas. As the engine sputtered and died, it backfired, which is the only thing I can think of that was out of the ordinary.
After filling the tank, I tried to start it, but it wouldn’t start.
I failed to start it several more times before I decided to let it cool down for a while. This has happened before and we were able to start it again after awhile.
As I waited, I puttered around with some other things around the yard, before trying again.
It still wouldn’t start.
Worse, as I was pulling the cord to start it, I could hear rattling noises.
I ended up putting it away in the garage and got the riding mower out. I decided it was worth a try to see if it would cut.
It wouldn’t start, either. The battery was dead again.
This battery was replaced just last year.
I put the charger on it, then puttered around the yard some more. Tried to start it again, but it hadn’t charged enough, so I went inside to have a meal.
The next time, it started fine, and I tried mowing.
I don’t know what’s going on with that thing. It will cut for a while, and then… not. As far as I can tell, everything is working the way it should. When it stops cutting, I can reverse it, then try and cut the stuff that was missed. Usually, it starts cutting again, but sometimes I have to reverse and try again a few times.
What makes it even more confusing is that when I got to the end of the strip, I would increase the speed to maximum and drive back to the other end, so that while cutting, the grass was always being expelled over grass that was already cut. I didn’t bother disengaging the mowing bed, and it was set lower than the push mower. While going around, and I could see the mower was actually cutting grass as I went over the grass cut with the push mower. However, once I was back at the taller grass and moving at the slowest speed, it would just for a short while, and then stop.
After a while, I just stopped. It was taking way too long and I was wasting too much gas.
So now we have a broken push mower, and a riding mower that doesn’t always cut. This is on top of three desktop computers in the household that had to be replaced, plus a laptop that is out of commission but will not be replaced. Which is also on top of having to replace the van, my mother’s car is making banging noises – and now has two flat tires, one of which has a broken bead at the rim and can’t be pumped up at all.
All of this is less than 12 months.
This has got to be the worse year for expensive things needing to be replaced or repaired – and things we can’t afford to replace or repair anymore!!
Well, I at least was able to end my time outside on a positive note. I did the semi-daily growth comparison photos of all the squash and melons.
I do see a couple of female flower buds near this one, but it will be a while before they bloom. This is on the side where two vines are growing. The third vine is growing between this new bed and the bed with the peppers and eggplant beside it. That one has shown no side of any female flowers, yet.
I did, however, find some tiny green Seychelle pole beans starting to develop on the trellis netting!
Next is the easternmost bed with the Summer of Melons blend of melons.
I had to split the Instagram slideshow photos into two batches. These is from the east facing side.
The problem is, I can barely see my screen in the light, so I couldn’t tell if the camera was focusing properly or not.
I had actually finished taking all the photos and was going back through the beds when I spotted another drum gourd, so I got a picture of that one, too. For all I can tell, there are more of them hiding among the leaves!
Next is the winter squash bed with the peas and beans.
I found a new one on the other side, too. After I took the photos, I found a couple more pieces of scrap wood to put under them. As with the Summer of Melons mix bed, I can see quite a lot of developing melons that are still too small to be sure they are pollinated. There is certainly no shortage of pollinators, though, which bodes well for future productivity!
I was definitely feeling better by the time I was done going through the garden.
Now to figure out what to do about our broken lawn mowers.
It isn’t a lot, but the more they get picked, the more they will keep producing! These are the Dalvay variety of peas that we got several years ago, and still have lot of seeds left over.
There is nothing like peas fresh off the vine!
The purple Dragonfly peppers are ripening much earlier than any of the other varieties we’ve planted this year. All the others are still very green. Eventually, we will have brown Sweet Chocolates, orange and yellow Early Sunsation and Early summer, and Purple Beauty peppers in this bed, too.
We aren’t going to be particularly hot today, so the only watering I did this morning was to fill the reservoirs by the drum gourds and pumpkins. The biggest of the pumpkins is starting to turn orange! I’ll be taking the comparison photos for the series I’ve been doing this evening – and hopefully, I will remember to include the Crespo squash this time! I completely forgot, last time.
My goal for today is to finish mowing the inner yard. I’d intended to do some mowing yesterday, but never got that far. I’d picked up replacement hose connectors, as we have leaking front yard hoses. With one connection, both hoses had already had their connections replaced, and both were leaking. One of them had a 1/2 inch connector instead of a 3/4 inch connector. The clamp couldn’t quite tighten it enough. The other was the right size, but still leaking. So I replaced both.
That took a LOT longer than it should have. The old connectors had to be cut off, one of the new clamps was bent and wouldn’t loosen or tighten properly, I tried to use the old clamp only to have part of it disappear completely, so I had to figure out how to get the bent new one to work, etc. I used Teflon tape on them, too, as an extra precaution to prevent leaking. I think I ended up spending at least an hour fighting with it.
The front tap has three hoses connected, and one of them predates our living here. It’s still one of the best hoses we have, though! It was leaking, so I replaced the rubber washer.
Then I turned the hose back on and…
It’s all still leaking.
*sigh*
I do have the contractor’s grade hose that was gifted to us. It is going to be used to replace the hose in the back and set up a garden tap again. It’s going to be a while longer yet, before we can dig up the rest of the buried water pipe, and I won’t start that until I have the pipe I want to run the hose through to protect it, before burying it.
The problem is, the pipe I’m looking to get costs at least $27 – $35 for a 3″ x 10′ length. The 4″ pipe is easier to find, but more expensive – and I’d need four of them, plus angled connectors for each end. The idea is that, if the hose ever needs to be repaired or replaced, it can be easily pulled out of the pipe without having to dig the trench again. I might be able to find pipe in the diameter I want that’s a better price, but for that, I’d have to actually go into a store in the city that carries them in stock (I’m not finding anything in stock locally) and look at what they have. Their websites are not very helpful.
So if it’s going to be a while before I can even consider using that hose to set up a garden tap, I may as well use it now!
Meanwhile, this time of year is when things like hoses go on clearance, so I should be able to get more heavy duty hoses to replace all our cheapies. I’m getting really tired of having the world’s kinkiest hoses! Even the non-kink hoses I got a year or two ago are constantly kinking!
All in good time, I guess.
For now, though, I want to get the inner lawn mowed, so I can move the truck to the yard and use the garage as a workshop to build an outdoor cat isolation cage. We have some pretty feral ladies that need to be trapped and spayed, and there’s no way we can keep them indoors anywhere for the 2 weeks they need for recovery. Who knows. We might even get them to be more semi-feral than feral while they are in an isolation cage!
We are having a much more pleasant day today, temperature wise. In fact, our overnight low last night dipped down to 9C/48F! I actually had to turn my fans off. 😄 Right now, coming up on 6:30pm, we’re still at our high of 21C/70F, which has been sooooo enjoyable!
I did end up watering the garden this afternoon, though. This time with water soluble fertilizer. The NPK on this fertilizer was 18-18-21, rather than the acidifying, high nitrogen fertilizer I used before. With so many things developing their fruit, they need that higher potassium and less nitrogen.
While I was watering in the main garden area, I saw something that made me smile!
We have pole beans developing! So far, just one purple Carminat plant has them, but the others are blooming, so I’m hoping to expect more. The green Seychelle beans that were planted later, to fill the gabs where the Carminat failed to germinated, will likely be a couple of weeks behind.
While watering the San Marzano tomatoes in the retaining wall blocks, I saw our first tomato that’s starting to show a blush of red.
At this time last year, most things were farther along, and we were still harvesting bush beans, and even some summer squash and some decently sized carrots. Still, things are growing well, for all that they’re behind in the growing season. As long as that frost holds off, we should have a pretty decent harvest at the end of the season.
Plus, we should soon have beans, corn and shelling peas to harvest!
Well. As long as something else doesn’t get them first. Like a deer. At least we don’t have problems with groundhogs this year, and with all the yard cats, rodents and hares are not a problem at all!
With the photos I took of the garden for my mother today, I realized that I haven’t really been doing general photos to share here. I’ve been doing that in the garden tour videos. So this is basically a photo tour of the garden today, and how things are doing.
The Goldy zucchini is blooming now! I didn’t get photo of the summer squash in pots, but the green zucchini is also blooming, though it’s not looking very healthy at all. The Magda squash is not blooming, but the plants are looking healthier. Go figure!
I set the images on Instagram to include the whole image, not just a cropped square, but for some reason, it didn’t take. So the image with the chocolate cherry tomatoes at the chain link fence is cut off, and you can’t see the potatoes in the background.
The kohlrabi seedlings are getting nice and big! I’m quite excited by them. Every time I’ve tried to grow them in the spring, they’ve failed entirely. This time, I actually have seedlings! They are protected from the deer by the netting but, unfortunately, the cats like to go under it and lie right where the kohlrabi are! So some of them are squished.
I didn’t bother taking a photo of the sad asparagus bed, or the sunchokes. The sunchokes, at least, are doing well, and are very tall.
The late potatoes are really huge and starting to show signs of dying back. The sugar snap peas are still growing and producing, which is a bit of a surprise. Early peas are usually done by now. The carrots seem unchanged, but the chard seedlings are definitely getting bigger, though in some spots, they seem to have not germinated at all.
The eggplants are growing bigger and blooming a lot right now; adding the grass clippings on top of the paper and cardboard mulch seems to be just what the doctor ordered! Even the hot peppers seems to be getting a boost from it, with more flowers, though I can’t see if there are more peppers forming.
The Crespo squash is really sprawling out! Cut off in the image is the single squash that’s growing, though I’m starting to see more female flowers again. Way too late in the season, though, for anything to come of them, unless we have a really long and mild fall.
I had to split up the photos of the main garden area into two Instagram batches.
The melons in the future trellis tunnel bed are doing quite well! I keep finding more and more hidden melons as I try to train more vines up the netting. This afternoon, I found even more, and have been putting bricks under the ones touching the ground to protect them. Even the surviving bush beans are looking really good. The onions gone to seed are getting so tall, they’re starting to fall over!
The pumpkins are also doing great and – much to my excitement! – when I was going through the vines this afternoon, I actually spotted some baby drum gourds! I never even saw female flowers, as they were hidden in the leaves! They are still at that stage where they might simply shrivel up and drop off but, hopefully, the pollination stuck.
There are quite a lot of peppers developing, hidden among the leaves. Only the dark Purple Dragonfly peppers seem to be getting ripe, though. The others are still very, very green.
Last night’s rain seems to have given the winter squash a huge boost; they just exploded in flowers this morning! All male flowers, but that’s okay. As I was going through them this afternoon, I kept finding more and more developing squash! I’ve been putting bricks or scrap pieces of boards under them as I find any that look like they’ve been successfully pollinated.
The shelling peas are not getting very tall, but they sure are getting lots of flowers and pods developing! This is really late for peas, but they were also planted late, and I’m impressed with how well they’ve survived the heat. I think the shade from all those squash leaves definitely helped!
There may not be a lot of pole beans, but they sure are getting tall! They are also starting to bloom, so I hope will will have something to harvest, soon.
The corn in the other winter squash bed is also doing very well. A few have fallen over in the wind, but I’ve been able to use the dollar store row cover hoops we aren’t using anymore to support them. Those are turning out to be quite handy, and I think I’ll be picking up more of them when I have the chance.
Finding a tiny tree frog on the biggest winter squash just made my morning! I love frogs! We have SO many of them this year, too!
The second melon bed is also doing fabulous. The watermelon is even starting to finally bloom. I found so many melons in there that were hidden among the leaves! I have been putting bricks, scrap pieces of wood, and even flat rocks under any that I find that look large enough to not dry up and fall off. I’m seeing many, many more tiny melons among the vines, but most of those will probably fall of, We shall see!
The San Marzano tomatoes in the main garden area are looking amazing. These are the ones that were the last to be transplanted, and the weakest, most damaged seedlings. Yet now, they have these thick, strong stems that don’t even really need the support posts! I think there’s lots of tomatoes on there, but it’s hard to see through the leaves. I haven’t been pruning them or anything, so we’ll see how that works out. The onions around them are doing well, too.
The shallots in the other bed aren’t doing as well – I think they’ve been rolled on by cats. The G-Star pattypan plants are getting so huge! The White Scallops are growing, but still quite small. The yellow bulb onions are going okay, except for one corner where it looks like something rolled right over them.
Then there is the strawberry bed. The deer eaten plants are recovering – and even starting to bloom! They might actually produce more berries this year! What an amazingly hardy variety! I’ll have to get more of them, that’s for sure.
The San Marzano tomatoes in the retaining wall blocks are producing fruit and growing, but nothing at all like the ones in the main garden area. The mint is doing well and I later harvested a large amount of it. Enough to make some jelly or a syrup, I think.
None of the garlic is ready to be harvested, still. This is quite late for garlic! The Forme de Coure tomatoes are thriving, as are the Black Cherries. What a difference between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes! Those cherry tomatoes are getting so tall, they’re starting to get higher than the lilac they are climbing through! The little strawberries we grew from seed also seemed to love the rain we had last night, and are just full of ripe berries. Even the luffa are getting noticeably bigger, though still nowhere near producing flowers. Ah, well.
So that is how the garden looked today. I wish I could say my mother was happy to see the pictures, but the closest she could come to a complement was to say how she hoped I’d be giving her some winter squash later on. 😄
Which I was planning to, even though when I did that before – at her request – she looked confused and told me she didn’t know what to do with it. She never grew winter squash. Just zucchini. Ah, well. We’ll figure something out for her!
As for me, I’m pretty happy with how things are looking right now!
The thermometer in the sun room was reading 39C/102F. This thermometer is against the west wall, about 3/4 of the way up to the ceiling. It does not get direct sunlight on it.
The thermometer outside my husband’s bedroom window was as high as the needle could go. If the numbers went that far, it would be about 60C/140F. This thermometer get blasted with the full sun for most of the day, in a mostly sheltered corner of the house. No shade and rarely any breeze.
The last thermometer is stored in the top of a cat shelter shelf. The shelf is in full sun, but the thermometer itself was in shade inside. It was reading 43C/109F. Of all the thermometers, I’d say that one is the most accurate to how it felt while walking around the garden beds.
Wow.
Honestly, I’ll take that over matching temperatures on the other side of freezing. Not that we see -60C/-76F, but we do see -40C/F at times, and that is far more deadly.
A couple of evenings ago, I took photos of our squash, pumpkins and melons, using my hand for perspective. Today, I did it again – but this time, I found more to take photos of! Since Instagram allows “only” up to 10 photos in a slideshow, I split the squash and melon photos up by beds.
Yes, I was able to find melons in the second bed this time! I had spotted one before, but today I moved the leaves around and found others.
I dug around in the leaves and found some “new” ones, too. In one photo, there are two melons, but the leaves and vines prevented me from getting a photo of them both, individually, so one of them is only half in the frame.
They’re getting big enough that they are starting to look like distinctively different varieties, too.
The smaller ones are getting noticeably not-small anymore!
The pumpkin vines are getting intertwined with the drum gourd vines. Those have many male flowers, but I have yet to find a female flower anywhere. It’s possible I can’t see any under all the leaves, but I think that’s unlikely. I’m wondering if they are getting enough water? These have a buried gallon water bottle buried next to their bases, so they get watered slowly and deeply, but a gallon of water might not be enough for something like this. I don’t know. It seems to be sufficient for the pumpkins, though!
The next bed is the winter squash interplanted with shelling peas and pole beans.
The first and largest one is among the few Summer of Melons mix transplants that were left over. The others, I’m not sure. They look like they are the same variety, but one was on the far side of the single surviving Cream of Saskatchewan water melon, which I know for sure are not from that mix. That would make them Sarah’s Choice melons. We grew those last year, but they were grown in a bed next to two other varieties and the vines were so mixed up, we lost track of which were which. The other melons in this bed would be the Pixie melons.
Oh, wow. I just linked those to where I bought them, and my goodness, the prices have sure gone up!!! Especially for the Pixies!
If you want to compare how fast these have been growing, you can check out the comparison posts I made on July 30 and July 28.
We may not have anything to harvest on a daily basis this year, but we sure to have a lot growing!
If the warmth keeps up, though, we might actually be able to have things to harvest. The bush beans first had to survive the slugs. Then they had to survive the deer. Amazingly, there are some that have recovered enough that they are starting to bloom! So Royal Burgundy bush beans are a possibility.
There aren’t a lot of pole beans, either, but they are also starting to bloom, so we might be able to harvest both the green Seychelles and the purple Carminate beans at some point. Which isn’t going to be easy, with all those winter squash vines growing around them! The shelling peas seem to be very prolific, with lots of flowers and developing pods, but it will probably be at least a couple more weeks before any of those can be harvested. The corn is also going to be a bit longer; they are sure releasing a LOT of pollen right now!
We also have green tomatoes developing, but nothing is even close to ripening, yet. Then there are the summer squash. I have no idea if we’ll get any green zucchini, Magda, Goldy zucchini or White Scallops, but I think we’ll definitely be getting some of the G-Star patty pans to harvest at some point. They’re not blooming yet, but there are buds starting to form, at least.
What a strange, strange gardening year. That rain we had in the spring really messed things up and set things back. We had Saskatoons blooming, but there are no berries – it was probably too wet for the pollinators. The cherry tree by the house isn’t going to have many berries, though there are some that are ripening. One chokecherry tree in the spruce grove is showing berries, but the one next to the main garden area has almost nothing on it. Even among the crab apples trees, there are a couple of trees where I’m not seeing any apples! These are the ones that have small apples the birds like to eat. The ones with apples that we like to eat do have apples on them, so the timing of blooms and pollinating seems to have been just right for those trees, but not the others.
We have plenty of pollinators, though. I don’t usually see them, but when I’m going through the garden, I can hear them buzzing. I will still hand pollinate the squash if I spot a female flower, but the melons have so many flowers that are so small, hidden among so many leaves, it’s all on the pollinators for those!
With the spring set backs, we can only pray to have a long and mild fall to make up for it!
As my SIL once told me some time ago; if we depended on our garden for food, we’d be starving! 😄
The Re-Farmer 