A short update while I wait for my ancient little camera to charge and the rain to stop so I can take more pictures around the garden.
Early in the season, hundreds of sunflowers popped up from the seeds of last year's plants. In the main garden plots, in raised beds, in pots...there's even one coming up in the middle of the lawn. We had to pull the majority to ensure enough light would reach the things we actually intended to grow. A few were transplanted to new locations.
In recent weeks, volunteer tomatoes have taken over where the volunteer sunflowers left off! They are coming up everywhere and look healthy and robust. I wish the tomato seedlings started indoors looked so good. Like the sunflowers, most volunteer tomatoes have had to been pulled. A few have been left in the garden to grow (one in the East garden has grown faster than the watermelon, kale, and zucchini there). We might even get a tomato or two from them by the end of the season.
The weather this summer has been reminiscent of the summers we used to have here: warm days (rather than scorching hot), mild nights, and regular periods of rain or drizzle. Though I'm sure the peppers would prefer more heat, everything else looks lush, green, and healthy. The peas, cabbage, potatoes, and herbs, in particular, are thriving. The poppies, which started blooming several days ago, are lasting longer in this cool, drizzly weather than they do on bright, hot days. The tomato flowers are setting well after several years of reduced flower-set caused by heat and periods of drought.
The garden has been blessed by the presence of an abundance of little ladybugs and damselflies this summer. They are almost magical to see, especially early in the morning when it's quiet and dew still covers everything. A few tiny grasshoppers and fuzzy bees visit throughout the day as well. The bees especially seem to love the asparagus fronds and Bachelor Buttons. I would like to see more bees. It seems like we used to have many more bees in the garden, years ago. Mercifully, there have been no hornets or wasps and neither root maggots nor slugs have made an appearance. *knock wood*
The spinach and some of the beets have already bolted. Layers of carrot seedlings, in various stages, are now coming up. I reseeded the carrots 3 times early in the season because germination was so low. With this extended stretch of cloudy, wet days, it seems like every single carrot seed is now coming up. Yesterday, they were thinned with gusto!
A quick stroll around the yard this morning revealed that deer were through overnight. A kale plant and chard plant have been eaten. We left a few kale and chard plants, sprayed with bitter deer deterrent, in pots near the front of the property. The hope was that a few bites of those plants would encourage them to continue on up the street, but instead they came deeper onto the property to see what else was on offer. Thank goodness we covered the cabbage with floating row cover and caged the peas and strawberries with netting...
A start-of-July roundup of garden pictures is coming soon. In the meantime, here is the first poppy of the season.
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