However... the backyard pool is always nice and clean for swimming, the kids are happy with all the fun activities we are doing, and the garden is growing really well. I invested in new supports this year - more 6 ft stakes, a new arbor, netting for the flowers, short fences to keep herbs together. Hopefully this will keep the plants upright better and prevent the pathways from being overrun.
The garden is growing so well again this year and every time I go out there I'm constantly in awe of how quickly and well things are growing out there - some of it literally overnight.
Mixed Flower Bed
My bouquet game is on fire this year.
The twinny apple blossom snapdragons started off mostly white with really short stems, but as the plants age the blossoms are now much more pink and the stems are getting longer.
The zinnias are already blooming, the strawberry globe amaranth is blooming. My pink lemonade cosmos have yet to bloom, but the pale pink ones are blooming a lot. The yarrow is in the vines bed, but I harvest it often for flowers. I'm really happy with the variety of flowers I'm harvesting and we have fresh flowers in the house every day these days. It's wonderful.
The snapdragons are prolific and I love them. At first I was a little nervous about what would come up in the seed mix of rocket hybrid snapdragons, but the red and yellow actually look really nice in my bouquets with the dahlias, zinnias and yarrow.
Dahlia Bed
Starting the dahlias in the greenhouse has been such a wonderful head start.
I have dahlias blooming in the garden and in the yard in my dahlia bed area. The ones I planted directly in the ground (and didn't pre-start) aren't even close to blooming yet, so it feels really good to enjoy such a massive head start from the greenhouse.
The first two bloom were American Dawn and Apricot Desire, followed by Wynn's Moonlight Sonata and Daisy Duke. Labyrinth, Belle of Barmera, Fairway Spur and Cornel Bronze are sure to follow soon - they all have buds!
Tomatoes
The tomatoes are doing so well. They are full, green and covered in blooms and green tomatoes. The borage is massive and covered in blooms, the marigolds in the corners are huge and full of blooms (and I'm ESPECIALLY proud of these since these are from seed!). Soon we will have a massive crop of tomatoes.
Vines and Things
The cucumbers are trying to take over the garden and every day there are vines that need to be trained onto the trellis. We have a lot of blooms and a few tiny cucumbers. The melon vines are growing steadily, with blooms starting. The swiss chard is beautiful. The carrots didn't do so well this year and I think it has to do with the weird weather, but there are a few growing and where there's a gap I added a nasturium. The yarrow that stayed in this bed is just FULL of blooms.
The peas on either side of the trellis did well, especially considering the weather. We had a great pea harvest for both spring peas and snap peas. They are almost done now, and I'll pull them off soon as the malabar spinach starts to grow a little bit more and the green bean seeds I just planted sprout.
And there are pumpkins! Tiny baby pumpkins! I didn't realize baby pumpkins were going to need GIANT vines (seriously my bad) so it's taken over half the bed, but it's still fun.
Herbs and Strawberries
The herbs are all doing well! I can't seem to keep the thyme or oregano in line they are so happy. The sage, rosemary, marjoram, calendula are all doing well too. I have a purple sunflower and a regular sunflower planted here.
The purple sunflower is blooming, but it's more of a dark red than a purple (there are different shades in the seed mix), but I still really like it! I have 3 more purple sunflowers growing on the fence so I'm curious to see what shades those are.
For some reason I have NO chamomile this year. It's the strangest thing. I sowed seeds twice, got little sprouts that were promptly eaten by something. I bought chamomile from the local greenhouse and it turned yellow and died. So odd since chamomile is supposed to be easy to grow and last year was so prolific. I'm a little sad because I really enjoyed harvesting and drying my own chamomile for tea.
The strawberries! Oh my goodness this has been the best year for strawberries we've ever had. I think it's a combination of getting the slug deterrent down at the right time, the deer netting for the chipmunks, and the ideal berry growing weather. We had huge, massive bowls of strawberries day after day after day from late May to mid-June. We made strawberry ice cream, strawberry liqueur, strawberry pie, strawberry juice, strawberry jam, strawberries for snacks and with meals and honestly we had so many we thought we might turn into strawberries. I've never had a bumper crop like this year, so it felt pretty darn good!
Pots in the garden
Lemon balm, lemon verbena, basil, sage, rosemary, hot peppers, flowers and a morning glory on a trellis, the fig tree... all of these are happy and doing well in the pots. We are getting small hot peppers already on two out of three of the plants. I'm harvesting fresh herbs and overall things are very good!
The lavender in the pot (that I carefully overwintered) died. I'm so sad! It was during a terrible heatwave and while I was watering the garden 2x a day, it somehow dried out completely. None of the other pots dried out like this, but by the evening when I returned to check on things, it was a brick. I kept it out for two weeks in hopes that the roots might come back... but it's gone. I have trouble with lavender sometimes - it can be tricky for me to keep it alive and get it to bloom!
Fruit Trees & Other Things
Raspberries! This year is the year of the berry, despite the crazy weather because we've harvested like 3+ lbs of raspberries.
Blueberries. This year, before the summer is over, we are building a "box" for the blueberries because our current netting setup isn't working. We had a decent amount of blueberries, but birds LOVE blueberries. So they are smarter than the netting setup and we haven't been able to enjoy the blueberries like the other berries this year.
Fig trees. The Chicago Hardy fig tree overwintered well and there are already tiny figs on it! The insulation wrap really made a big difference. I had to cut back a lot of suckers this spring/summer from the ground. The brown turkey fig in the pot is developing its root system and growing in the corner of the garden. It will take a couple of years to get established before it fruits, but I'm hopeful that having a potted outdoor/greenhouse fig will give us two kinds in the future. The original brown turkey fig remnants are trying to grow into a new fig tree and I'm trying to groom it into a big tree like the chicago hardy that we can trim and wrap in the winter (an experiment).
Citrus trees. The citrus trees are good, they always like summers on the deck. I have a couple of lemons and limes, but most of the tiny fruits were destroyed by my arch nemesis, the squirrel that lives nearby.
Elderberry Bushes. My latest backyard additions are doing well, it will take a few years to fruit but I am just glad they are still alive! I planted an Adam and a John (you have to plant two varieties next to each other for fruit), though I don't know much about the different kinds. When these are bigger they will probably need a box like the blueberries to stop the birds, but we'll see how it goes.
Rhubarb. This photo is before I harvested it. And it's the FIRST year I've harvested it after all these years! It's never been able to get large enough to yield much, thanks to rabbits and trees and transplanting... but it's finally reached a mature age!
Blackberries. In our yard it's strawberries, then raspberries and blueberries, then the blackberries come in. Right now the bushes have tiny green fruits and flowers on them. It's the off year for these - blackberries only fruit on last year's wood, then after fruiting that stem dies. So we get a big harvest every other year, with a small-to-medium harvest on the off year. So this year we'll have less than last year, but we'll see a lot of new growth this summer and next year we'll have our next bumper crop.
Lavender! Normally I don't write about lavender but this year I had two big bouquets like this one, harvested next to the house by the greenhouse. This little plant has survived two winters and this is the reward! I have a hard time keeping lavender alive - I think our summers are too hot and our winters are too cold. This one survives because it's in a protected spot.
The garden really gets going in July. I'm excited to see cucumbers, tomatoes, hot peppers, herbs and endless flowers.
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