July Garden

The garden hit its peak in July, for better or worse with the difficult weather. Too hot, too wet. Prime time for blights and mildews to attack the plants and take over. It's effecting things in the yard that have never had blight before, I'm fighting an uphill battle. Things are definitely turning brown as August creeps in. The squash vine borers discovered the mini pumpkin vines. The cucumber vines are withering from blight. The tomatoes leaves are spotted and yellow. The zinnias are battling powdery mildew in the air (as are other flowers and my crepe myrtle tree). 

However... it's been an abundant year too. There are 11 baby pumpkins. We've had tons of cucumbers and tomatoes with so many more to go. The flowers have been unreal - my best bouquets ever from the cutting garden and my yard is just full of flowers. It's beautiful. 

Tomatoes

The cages are tipping from the weight of the tomatoes. There are SO many. Next year I need to anchor them like I do my dahlias with 6 foot stakes. I used them up in the flower beds (which is where I bought them for) and I have a couple in here... but not enough. I should have one for each plant, which I really should have figured out last year, but I blamed the severe storms we were having more than anything else. There are SO many tomatoes here! We are getting ripened cherry tomatoes to start, but there are so many fruits and flowers I think this year will be a bumper crop again. The companion planting of marigolds and borage (which are both doing ridiculously well) has really helped - keeping pests away and increasing crop yield (I planted marigolds in the corners of the beds where they can still get light, and a borage on each end). 

The only thing we are struggling with in here is blight, which we struggle with every year. The leaves get spots, weather and shrivel into brown paper. I refuse to spray anything because this is our food. The black krim and yellow pear are withering the fastest - I don't expect them to be alive much longer. We do have LOTS of tomatoes from both though, so it's still a win. 

Vines

Pumpkins have taken over one side of the arbor... and I'm good with it because they won't last much longer. As I mentioned before, the squash vine borers have taken over, sucking the life out of the plant rather quickly. However, not all is lost here - it's still a successful garden experiment for the fun factor alone. The mini pumpkins are delighting my children to no end right now, we've counted 11. 

The swiss chard is beautiful. The yarrow is blooming nonstop. The cucumbers are producing like crazy, but the August blight has set in early thanks to high humidity, a lot of rain and heat. I don't think the cucumbers will last much longer, though we are eating (or juicing) a lot of them for July. 

The melons are a flop. The vines never took off the way they did last year - just two little straggly things with a few flowers and one tiny melon. Then the blight set in and there's no going back. Last year we had 6 full sized cantaloupe doing the exact same thing, so I can only blame weather and timing.

The carrots are also not doing great - the plants are still small. For whatever reason this isn't the year for carrots either in my yard... though sometimes they pick up in the fall when the weather cools and we end up with plenty of carrots by October. We'll see. 

Mixed Flowers

This is the year of the snapdragon. And the zinnia. And the cosmo. And the dahlia... so maybe it's just the year of the flower right now. With the blight attacking the garden full force on the veggie side, I'm trying to keep these plants healthy with organic fertilizer and dish soap spray for the bugs. It's not the most powerful combination for diseases and pests... but we're getting tons of flowers anyways. 

The netting is working really well to hold all the flowers up and keep them from flopping into the pathways. I'm going to need another layer over the zinnias and cosmos soon. I understand why all the flower farmers use these now - they are so helpful for cut flower beds!

I love the combination this year of dahlias, zinnias, snapdragons, cosmos and yarrow in bouquets. The mix of textures is just awesome. Originally I really wanted to do monochromatic colors (which I also tried hard to do last year) but snapdragon seed mixes don't let you choose. I'm happy with it now though - the different shades and textures make the bouquets so much more interesting. And when I place like colors together (such as apricot desire dahlias with yellow snapdragons and yellow zinnias) it looks really pretty. 

The bouquets are going strong. 

Dahlias

The dahlias are blooming! They are all so beautiful. In this bed are Belle of Barmera, Labyrinth, Wynn's Moonlight Sonata, American Dawn, Cornel Bronze, Apricot Desire, Daisy Duke and Fairway Spur. American Dawn and Daisy Duke are currently the most prolific, but I know once Cornel Bronze heats up it will give them competition (it's a slow starter but then provides a million blooms). American Dawn is my new favorite- the blooms are so many different colors all at once, on long sturdy stems, and is prolific. Just look at it:

The Wynn's Moonlight Sonata in the cutting garden is more coral than orange this year. The bulb last year made four - one that's more coral (here) and three that were the same orange as last year. One of those oranges is in the side dahlia bed by the driveway/fence, the others were gifted to neighbors. 

This bi-color daisy duke was a delightful mutation! The coral pink on the left is its normal color, the purple-pink is new. 

I know I said American Dawn dahlia is my new favorite... but then I see Labyrinth dahlias and I change my mind. Those fluttery petals, soft shades of peach and pink... Labyrinth will also always be a favorite.

I need to really do a post on dahlias separately. I have so many in the yard too, not just the cutting garden, and so many varieties now. They are all so pretty.  

Herbs and Stuff

Good things are happening in the herb garden. Lemon verbena, St John's Wort, Rosemary, Calendula, Thyme, Oregano, Sage, Borage, Lemon Balm, Lavender. I have a purple sunflower and a big yellow sunflower in here - so cheerful!

The purple sunflower actually looks very red, much to my disappointment. The packet showed pale purple/cream sunflowers, a couple of red and a lot of dark purple. I have a cream one by the fence outside the garden, but the rest are red. They are still pretty... but just not what I had hoped! If I wanted red sunflowers I would have bought red seeds, not purple. Oh well. Maybe I'll get lucky next year?

The potted brown turkey fig tree is still alive. I'm hoping it will continue to develop and produce figs in 2-3 years if I keep it in the pot in the greenhouse in the winter. Fingers crossed. 

The big yellow sunflower has yet to bloom but will in August. 

Pots

This year the pots aren't great. Not bad... but not great. The morning glory just refused to take off this year and then has a blight on it. The sage and lavender look healthy but aren't growing. All three hot pepper plants have peppers, but only one is big. It's like my flower pots around the yard... some things are super happy and enormous. Some things are stringy or small. And they can be the same variety in different pots.

Other Fruiting Plants

The raspberries finished, the birds circumvented the netting and got all the remaining blueberries in one swoop, and the blackberries started. It's a good reminder for me that we need to build blueberry boxes for next year - the netting isn't working and is choking the plants. Mosquito netting keeps the bugs and birds away but makes harvesting really tricky. The blackberries are delicious this year, thanks to all the rain, they are sweet. 

We are awaiting figs in August/September from the Chicago Hardy fig tree. Hopefully it will be a good harvest. 

This fern hiding in the dahlia side bed is actually asparagus. Morgan used to eat it as it came up so it's never really had a chance to establish itself over here after its transplant. I kept a cage around it this year and nothing ate it. We'll see how it does. I like that it provides some alternative texture/foliage to the dahlia bed here and is tall enough to work right alongside the tall dahlias. 

Greenhouse 

Over by the greenhouse (which is basically an extension of the garden), I have a purple anemone! It's a total surprise, since the ranunculus/anemone bulb experiment was an epic disaster due to starting them way too late in the season and the summer temps arriving in May. The heat was too much for these cold weather loving plants. But out of nowhere one of the few surviving anemone plants bloomed! Now! In the heat! One out of thirty bulbs is pretty pathetic... but I'm still counting it as a WIN. 

For anyone who is curious, there are a few plants that live in the greenhouse even in the summer. They are all heat loving plants - succulents and tropical stuff. They love the bright light and they don't mind the heat, as long as I pop in to water them once in a while. The tropicals will go into the house in the winter because I learned the hard way that the greenhouse is too cold. The succulents don't seem to mind though. 

I even have a new bloom on one of my succulents! A different one bloomed in the winter but it looked very similar with coral blossoms.