Summer Gardens 2015 Part 4

It's about time for the dog days of summer around here. But we have adequate moisture.

Loved your pictures StephanieTX.
I am also needing some rest ... oohhh ... every morning in the gardening ... and then in the kitchen ...
I am sure I will appreciate all this bounty in the next months/years ... but now I need some sleep ...

Today's harvest basket wasn't too full. Had a couple more jalapenos and okra. Most of the tomatoes I harvested had cracked. :( Found a second watermelon and cantaloupe. Yippee!

the more i look at stephanies photos, the more im wondering if im picking my cukes too soon, considering we both have munchers growing.

jmc, I find cukes are much tastier when they're freshly pick and still young. :)

and here is todays harvest, you can see what i mean by the difference in size between when i pick my cukes compared to hers, lol

although one perk to that is the seeds are tiny and not big and tough

Munchers don't get too fat. They are a slender cucumber. Some of these were "hidden" and stayed on a bit too long. Here's one that I'll pick tomorrow.

oh, good to hear that i was picking them at the right time, was wondering if i wasnt letting them reach their full potential, lol :)

ok i am officially getting sick of this rain every day thing, and my garden is getting pretty sick of it too.....or rather, they are just plain getting sick, i think my cukes are catching some type of disease, the leaves are getting yellow spotted.

Mine have that as well and we've been rain-free daily for the past month. I sprinkled horticultural cornmeal and dry powdered garlic around my plants and it helped a bit.

Today's harvest and a few other pics from my garden. I have two cantaloupes and two watermelons on vines now. Woot! Lots of bean flowers, but not a lot of bean pods. (What's up with that??) The tomatoes are petering out due to the high heat and lack of rain.

Have something growing in the compost pile. I'm 99% certain it's a cantaloupe, but we'll have to wait and see.

Had some visitors in the garden this morning.

First gray zucchini almost ready!

A heck of a lot more tomatillos showing up on my plant now

and of course more cukes and tomatoes for todays harvest, lol

Still lots of tomatoes from the garden.
A few eggplants and squashes too.

jmc, what do you do with all the tomatillos?

no clue yet, first time ever growing them, lol :) but ive been looking around online at recipes that use them, to get some ideas

I made salsa verde, but it was really salsa violeta since I had purple tomatillos.

I've grown them but I could only eat so much salsa.

finally got my first zucchini today.

Had to pull one of my kentucky beefsteak tomatoes a bit early, because the weight of it was ripping the fruiting stem off of the main vine

very nice!
my squash plants are making tons of male flowers and hardly no female ... sight !

venturing back into my garden this evening, its like July 4th all over again down there, color explosions everywhere. I even had a couple of blanket flower plants started from seed this year to break the rules and bloom first year for me.

Yes, that is clover that i have in my garden too, lol. Using as a nitrogen fixer, and to attract pollinators with those big pink pom-poms, who says that this is a "weed"? If it is, then i figured out how to make a weed work in my garden space, lol

I guess red clover could be better than some of the weeds I have in the garden. Wonder if Crimson Clover (the annual) sets as much nitrogen in the roots as the red clover (perennial)?

todays harvest....unfortunately my eggplant days are numbered, the excess rain has caused leaf yellowing, and the flea beetles and mealy bugs are taking advantage of its stress, i mash the ones that i catch, but their numbers are back in force before i know it.

Next time around i will go by something that i read, and plant radish around the eggplant, according to the article i read, flea beetles hate being around radish

I doubt radishes will survive the summer heat. I would look for a variety well known for heat tolerance, and not expect the roots to be worth eating. If you know someone with livestock, pigs might be content with pithy, extra hot radishes. Although since flea beetles eat radishes, I doubt they would work as a repellent. Perhaps as a trap crop?

I'm having a weird year down here. I have almost no pests at all this year. A few cucumber beetles early on, a handful of leaf-footed bugs. Slugs and snails, as always. Even my trap crops for leaf-footed bugs is pretty much clear. No SVB, squash bugs or pickle worm!? My only guess is that we've have two winters in a row with episodes of temperatures way below normal and this has put a dent in pest populations.

BUT... overall productivity is not great. My plants aren't as big as usual and are not producing as much fruit as usual. But they are otherwise healthy and producing good tasting food steadily.

Berries are the exception; those had a great year.

It has me pondering the relationship between plant signalling and pests. We know that plants will signal each other "help I am being eaten" which causes other plants to ramp up certain defensive chemicals. Being eaten would cause plants to put on more foliage to make up for photosynthesis losses.

Maybe some bug predation is good for overall productivity?

you may be right about it being more of a trap crop, and they definitely would have to be sacrificial radishes in that summer heat......well then again maybe not entirely, they would be good for letting them go to bolt for seed collection, and maybe eating a few of the premature radish seed pods.

so what do you guys think here, is this carrot seed head ready to be harvested and dried? or should i wait a bit longer, i have seen videos on carrot seed harvesting, and the harvested heads look somewhat like this. (red romaine lettuce seed pods in the background behind it)

This message was edited Jul 10, 2015 4:30 PM

I think I would wait a little longer. Seems like the seed should be more brown.

He in NY our vegetables are slower but I am having good results.Steak ,vine ,globe tomatoes and cucumbers

cytf...Mine are slower, too. Straw bale gardening for the first time has speeded things though plus our unusually warm, very little wind, summer has helped too. Here are my squash and Blue Lake bush beans in straw bales.

Forgot to say...Your tomatoes are Great. And so are you cucs. Happy summer gardening to all.

what are those little white flowers along the ground at the base of the straw bales in that last photo? :)

beebonnet, strawbale looks so clean and nice and the plants looks so healthy .I tried squash once but did have good luck with it.but I am willing to try again.

and todays harvest includes one of my other types of peppers, something from a bag mom bought once that was labled as "Mini bells", i just wanted to see what it would do, but it looks like it came true from seed.

Here are a couple of harvest pics. The single box was from Thursday and the other is from this morning.

jmc-where is the mini bell? I see strawberries, I think.

Stephanie, WOW. What are you doing with all those gorgeous tomatoes?


Regarding the cucumber beetles....their larva (grub) eat the roots of plants. I figured this out the hard way.

i dont think that i will try everbearing strawberries next year, this whole getting just 1 or 2 berries at a time thing just isnt my thing, lol. And i have 6 plants going.

This message was edited Jul 11, 2015 4:27 PM

Beautiful harvest - right down to the grapes?

Definitely not a mini bell. Looks like a Bulgarian Carrot.
What kind of everbearing do you have? We raise Seascape & need to pick 3X a week.
Lots of nice big berries.
Here's a few pictures of our offerings on Thursday.

Wow, now that's an impressive offering!

they definitely arent bulgarian carrot peppers, not the least bit of heat in them. I dont remember the name of the everbearing right off (got them from Lowes is all i remember), they are growing in a metal wash tub, i just wonder if that is too much heat on them. Then again only 6 plants should only be expected to give so much at a time, huh? Given the photos of your harvests, i assume that you probably have a whole patch full, lol.