June Garden

The raised bed garden had a good month in June. Despite the late start due to unusual cold in the first half of May (aka SNOW), the garden has made up for lost time thanks to lots of sunshine and good weather. Everything is back on track and I'm so excited for this garden. Often by July we've had so much rain and humidity, we're already battling blight and mildew. This year has been more sun than rain by far. 

I had to add a July update to the bottom of this post (since it took me so long to post it...), so stay tuned. But June was hands down a fantastic garden month. 

Dahlia Bed

The dahlias are growing strong. A couple came up late (I was nervous for a few days), but now everything is so green and lush here. I'm really happy with the cages so far too to keep them growing straight up. No blooms yet but they are coming, very soon. There are lots of buds!

Mixed Flower Bed

I have zinnia seedlings, lemonade cosmo seedlings, chantilly bronze snapdragon seedlings, globe amaranth seedlings, summer berries yarrow seedlings. Everything is growing strong - the snapdragons are starting to bloom and they are GORGEOUS. I have more support in the flower garden bed this year since the dahlia beds now have cages, so that always helps with keeping everything growing well. I've had a couple of zinnias too. The yarrow and cosmos are still growing, but I'm sure they will bud soon. The globe amaranth is starting to bloom but those flowers take time to get larger and develop before harvesting (I can't wait!). 

Tomatoes

This is the year of tomatoes so far and hopefully it continues to be the case. They are SO tall. Green and lush. Flowers and green tomatoes all over each plant. The Sweet 100's cherry tomato is so tall I have to use the archway to support it. It's literally over 6 feet. The companion borage I planted this year (it's supposed to increase tomato production) is also doing well so far. It has tiny blue flowers that are just so cool. I lost a marigold to the largeness of the tomatoes, but I transplanted the two survivors from the middle to the corners so they can get a bit of sun. 

The spring peas growing up the archway are huge. They are taller than me! And we've been eating peas like there's no tomorrow. The kids snack on them straight from the garden during the day. They are starting to brown due to the heat, as a spring crop they probably won't last much longer. The malabar spinach that's meant to take over when the peas die back is slowing growing. In years past it's slow to start but then once it gets going it grows FAST. 

Vines and Things

This bed looked so bland a month ago - all these seeds planted with little to show for it except the snap pea vines. Currently the snap peas are at their peak, producing more than we can eat, and the boys are constantly snacking on them throughout the day and we're eating them nightly with dinner (they are also just starting to brown due to the heat as well, but the pole beans should take over). The rest of the bed has taken off and I'm looking forward to all the produce here. The cucumbers and melons are taking over their support structures like crazy. The melon is covered in flowers. We've had a ton of cucumbers the past week - more than we can keep up with! The carrots are still little wisps, but they are there! The rainbow chard is huge and I'm harvesting it a lot. The nasturiums are also much bigger than I expected - last year they took a while to take off, this year it was just BOOM and they were huge. This bed is more crowded than I expected - usually things don't all do so well at once!

Herbs & Strawberries

Strawberries! We've had so many strawberries this year. The berries are really happy having their own dedicated raised bed space with good compost/dirt and regular watering. I've managed to deter the chipmunks enough that the strawberries are ours to eat - it's been fun for the boys to pick and we've had bowls and bowls of them. 

The herbs are doing great too. The thyme and Oregano were not only harvested twice already, but I've had to use some fencing support to keep them contained and keep them from taking over a whole bed for themselves. My calendula and chamomile flowers are being harvested regularly for drying. The basil, borage, and two kinds of sages are growing steadily. The lemon verbena is just starting to flower too. Dill isn't a fan of summer heat, so I harvested more than half of it already for drying. The rosemary in the bed and the rosemary in the pot are slowly growing bigger. The lemon balm I have in a pot is huge. 

I moved the St. John's Wort from behind the oregano to a new flower bed along the left side fence next to the garden - it's part of a plan to finally clean up this area and make it pretty, and I don't have enough plants for it, so it was a good place to move this struggling plant. The other one in the pot is 4x the size, so I'm hoping the bigger space will help it thrive. 

Other Pots

The ghost pepper and jalapeno pepper plants are huge. The Habanero is pretty small still - I gave it an extra dose of fertilizer to help give it a boost, or it might be the cool weather slowing it down since I know hot peppers like hot dry summer days. My morning glory's first vine has almost reached the top of the trellis already. The potted flowers are steadily growing and are a pretty addition to the garden.

Elsewhere

The raspberries are plentiful this year and we're just about at the end. We check the bush daily and there's always a handful - so many delicious raspberries the past couple of weeks! The blueberries are doing well - hopefully we get to enjoy them this year and not the birds! There's a few ripening each day. The blackberries are growing- we should have a nice crop in a few weeks.

The fig trees are green and leafy - it's pretty cool that our winter was mild enough to not nip the Chicago hardy all the way to the ground. The Brown Turkey fig is growing back from the ground as usual - I need to move this one to a pot if I'm ever going to get figs out of it. The winters are too cold and the growing season too short. 

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July Update... yesterday we had a DEVASTATING hail storm. This post was set to go out today, I was feeling quite pleased with how the garden was doing... and then we had the worst storm we've had in 10 years. Golf ball sized hail that went on and on for over 10 minutes, followed by rain that was so hard it was falling at a rate of 20" per hour. It's estimated we got 12-14", our rain gauge tapped out at 10". The storm was forming over us, so it lasted about 45 minutes. Heavy winds. Branches and leaves were down everywhere. The tiny creek that runs nearby overflowed and closed the main road. We had actual flash floods and a little water in the basement. The backyard was a giant lake. The pool overflowed from the water, ice accumulation and wind and once it overflowed we lost 2 feet of water and it's full of leaves and branches. 

My potted plants are full of bruised and broken flowers. The flower beds range from okay to terrible, depending on where they are and if they had any protection from a fence or tree. The worst of course is the garden. My tomatoes were all snapped in half and a million tiny green tomatoes everywhere. The swiss chard was beaten to a pulp. The cucumbers, melons and sunflowers all have leaves riddled with holes like they were shot with bullets. Pepper plants broken in half. Dahlias are covered in bruised leaves. Snapped carrots. Wilted and bruised herbs. The nasturiums are just stalks, the leaves all gone. The flowers are bent, broken or beaten. I spent an hour cleaning up and I have a full wheel barrow full of debris, and a lot more to go. It's a little depressing... but plants are resilient. What's left will hopefully come back.

I didn't take any photos of the garden because it's just too depressing. But here's the debris I cleaned up last night... I might have cried a few tears.