The Garden Chronicles July 31, 2011 - Catching Up and Weeds Be Gone!

Record-setting heat, humidity and rain this summer led to record-setting weed growth in the vegetable and flower beds.  We can barely keep up with them all.  

Our strawberry bed gave us small but sweet fruit, and the currant bushes were heavier with fruit than during our drought years.  

An overview of the yard shows plants grown tall from rain, but they have been slow to produce edibles.  Squash and zucchini have flowers but so far just one zucchini.  Some squash bugs may be to blame.  Cucumbers are now coming in slowly, as well.

All 15 of the seedling tomato plants have flowers and small tomatoes forming.  Tomato plants have planted themselves all over the garden, including this one that is growing out of the compost heap.

Here are the squash and cucumber plants.

Tomatoes and beans.

In the front yard, the black-eyed susans are this week's show of our street.

The phlox is one of the last summery flowers to bloom.

The black raspberries planted last year are now as tall as the red raspberry bushes in the backyard.  Both have produced very well this summer.

We are looking forward to pears in a few weeks.  They look like they are almost ready, but they need to ripen and get a little larger before we will pick them.

Today's harvest was beans, asparagus that seems neverending this summer, one small carrot, and a cucumber.

The Garden Chronicles July 4, 2011 - A Prime Holiday Weekend

Perfect weather makes a perfect holiday weekend.  After many weeks of dreary rain, cool temperatures, and little sun, the garden grows slowly with few successes.  Warmer, sunnier days in the last couple of weeks resulted in lush flowering yarrow, daisy, and day lily.  The asparagus has been producing well for over 6 weeks, and a small harvest of cherries and honey berries resulted in this cobbler-for-two.

The 30-day lettuce is our spring-into-summer mainstay for salads, as is dill, mint, and chives.  The Egyptian onions are also a nice enhancement to our salads.

The strawberries did poorly this June, and this afternoon we will clear out the plants entirely to make room for something more productive while there is time for growing: beans, for certain.  Maybe rutabagas, too.  Next year, we will re-plant strawberries.

Raspberries, black and red, and black currants are next up for harvesting in about a week.