July Garden Update

   June's weather, and heading into July, has been generally cool to mild, overcast, and wet.  Some crops (like brassicas, peas, garlic, and beets) enjoy this, while others (like tomatoes, peppers, beans, and squash) could really use some heat and sustained sunshine.

The North garden...

North garden - garlic, cabbage and snap beans (Roma and Red Swan).

North garden - squash (Gold Nugget and 1 Table King Acorn) and dry beans (Vermont Cranberry, Tene's Beans, and Ireland Creek Annie).

Garlic scapes (the curlicues) are starting to emerge!

Tiger Eye beans

The South garden - Early Prolific summer squash, carrots (Chantenay), collards, kale (Lacinato and curly), chard, snap beans (Calima and Slenderette), and cosmos (Dwarf Sensation Mix).  Peas are on the other side, not pictured here.

Lettuce...

...and more lettuce!

Most of the beans are about this size (Mitla Black are pictured)...

...though a few are just now coming up (Flageolet).

The squash should all be about this size (Lower Salmon River, which I started indoors in May, is pictured)...

 ...but most are this size (Early Prolific summer squash pictured)...

...and one is only this size!  (Table King Acorn pictured, next to a sunflower).  I think this variety requires 85-90 DTM.  Here's hoping for a very mild September.

Black Kitty is a frequent visitor to our yard.  He usually shows up at night.  He is intact (what is it with these owners...?!?), vocal, and very skittish, but will come trotting to me when it's dark and quiet outside.

Can you spot the damselfly on the bean leaf?  (Click to enlarge)  I love damselflies, and have been seeing one or two a day lately.

Detroit Red beets, Lacinato kale, and Dukat dill.

Just some of the many volunteer pansies that came up in the garden and some of the raised beds.

Brad's Black Heart is the most sprawling and gangly of the tomato varieties I'm growing this year.

On the other end of the spectrum, Coastal Pride Orange is the most compact tomato I have ever grown.  I believe it's considered a dwarf variety.  I thought they were supposed to reach 3 feet, but they seem slow to gain height.

Purple Vienna Kohlrabi

The Bathtub:  Dazzling Blue kale, Lacinato kale, red chard, Fordhook chard, yellow pansies, Italian Flat-Leaf parsley.  Mints and pineapple sage from the greenhouse in front.

Tomatoes in the background, Beka Brown dry bush beans, and summer savoury in the foreground.

The Summer Savoury is doing well this year compared to past years.  I will definitely start it in milk jug greenhouses again!

Tomato flower (variety: Hungarian Heart).  Early Annie was the first variety to produce flowers, followed by Black Prince and Scotia.

South side of the house - tomatoes (Scotia, Hungarian Heart, Anna Russian, Work Release Paste), thyme, rosemary, and a cucumber (white pot).

South side - tomatoes (Striped German, Early Annie, Black Sea Man), nasturtiums, lettuce, and dahliettas (no blooms yet).

Potatoes (Norland)

Cabbage (Red Express and Brunswick)

A fuzzy bee enjoying the raspberry patch.

Carrots (assorted heirloom), kale, and onions.

Curly kale

Potato bins and a few tomatoes (Dwarf Roza Vetrov, Early Annie).

Summer savoury and a cucumber plant.

The East garden - sunflowers, marigolds, potatoes (Kennebec), jalapeno peppers, Romanesco cauliflower (Veronica), dry pole beans (Dolloff), green zucchini (mostly Black Beauty - I think!), cosmos (Dwarf Sensation Mix), and tomatoes (Midnight Sun, Black Prince, and Polish Linguisa).

Dolloff pole beans and sunflowers

The jalapeno peppers (in a vertical line in the picture) are still very small.

"Veronica" Romanesco cauliflower, with volunteer potatoes coming up alongside them.

A volunteer bean, growing in front of potatoes.  Looking forward to finding out what kind of bean this produces!

Rotten Floors and Suspected Gout

   Late June, R. decided to do a major reorganizing of the computer room.  The "computer room" is essentially a jam-packed, catch-all storage room for R's modelling and terrain supplies, paints, books, knick-knacks, papers, filing cabinets, etc.  As he began looking through his things, a corner of the room, in his words, "sank in a disturbing way" under his foot.  He peeled back the carpet (and several layers of lino, padding, and assorted weird liners) to discover the floor there was rotten. He pulled back more carpet to discover more rotten floor.  The smell of must/mould in the house, which had been a constant and troublesome presence (to me) for some time, became even more intense.  

   He moved everything in the room to other parts of the house and out to the lawn at the side of the house.  Two friends of his who do construction/carpentry work came in to deal with the floor and one of the walls during the last week of June.  They took out the floor and there was an immediate improvement in the air quality in the house.  The mould had been on the wood.  We had a fan in the window almost constantly to get some of the moisture, heat, and the smell of must/mould out of that room while they worked (they wisely wore face masks).

   Taking out the floor revealed that the dirt "crawl space" (which often becomes wet when it rains or there is snow melt, due to the poor condition of the house's foundation) was only a few inches below the floor, rather than the 2+ feet it should have been.  The room had basically been built over the lawn, held up with a few cement blocks and planks of wood.  Whoever built it was either lazy, cheap, profoundly stupid, or some combination of the three.

   The guys dug the crawl space down another foot or so, laid down a heavy plastc barrier, put in the floor, and replaced a section of drywall.  More work of a similar nature will have to be done in the living room near the front door, but that will have to wait until later this summer.  

   On the last day (the 28th or 29th - I can't remember), one of the guys put down the lino R bought.  R. primed and painted the room.  On Saturday, he started putting together the plastic shelving units, putting up a some wall shelves, and moving some of his storage cabinets back into the room.

   By that evening, his left knee was tight, swollen, and stiff. By the next morning, it was worse and he could barely walk.  As of today, it is still causing him pain and he has been camped out on the couch pretty much 24/7 and walking with canes to get to and from the bathroom.  Two nights ago, the pain was intense and he wondered if gout had set in at the knee, as he thought he had strained it when he moved a (full) plastic storage unit back into the computer room.  He took some of his gout meds from the last flare-up.  While it didn't completely relieve the pain, it reduced it - and the inflammation - somewhat.

  Time will tell how long he will be laid up with his knee.  In the meantime, I am doing deep-breathing exercises and going out for coffee with friends so I don't lose it from the claustrophobia of living in a house that is beginning to resemble something from the show, Hoarders, while the lawn and raspberry patches become hayfields.  I have health concerns of my own and there is only so much I can do.

   It will be interesting to see where things stand next summer.  I think the writing is on the wall, and, unfortunately, without yard help, a plan, or a dramatic improvement in our health and fitness levels, it is time to cut back.  As much as I love and live for gardening, apartment living is starting to look good to me.

Update: R. woke up to find that the gout has moved into his foot and ankle in addition to being in the knee.

Ow.

Return of the Groundhog

   Or at least, it was the return of a groundhog.  I doubt this is the same fellow who showed up on June 10th.  Earlier this week, R.  came out of Canadian Tire and there, crouched under his car in the parking lot, was another one!

   This little guy was under a wood rain barrel stand at the corner of the house yesterday afternoon.  Trying to be inconspicuous, while our cats tried to figure out (from a healthy distance) what he was.  

Enchanting

Fire Up The Grow Light

  
  Good grief.  Every year, there are one or two vegetables that will just not get going.  Last year, it was the snap beans.  This year, it is the squash.

   Lower Salmon River squash (C. maxima) were started indoors in mid-May.  I am so glad I did this, as it is the one variety that is growing well.

   Since May 25th, I have direct-sowed two kinds of green zucchini, Early Prolific (C. pepo), Table King Acorn (C. pepo), and Gold Nugget (C. maxima) twice - three times in the case of the zucchini.   

   As of today, one green zucchini, one Early Prolific, and three Gold Nugget have sprouted.  Most of these don't even have secondary leaves yet.  No sign of the acorn squash.

   On June 16th, I planted seeds (again!) in small containers, planning to transplant them to the garden once they were a reasonable size.  The latest forecast for the next week, however, calls for cool, rainy weather.  Arhg.  We only have 90 growing days we can count on - sometimes, not even that.  Out came the heat mats from storage today and under the grow light the pots of squash seeds went.  It feels ridiculous and frustrating to have to do this in the middle of June!  Fingers crossed that this does the trick. 

   Since late May, a bunch of volunteer squash (or cucumber?) have been coming up, mostly in one of the black containers on the south side of the house.  I must have pulled out 15 or more before curiosity got the better of me and I transplanted two into large pots.  Several more have popped up since then, and I transplanted a third this morning.  Seeing as I am having problems with the squash I've deliberately planted this summer, I figured I might as well “take the hint” and nurture the ones that are coming up on their own, prolifically!   Which variety they are remains to be seen.  Spaghetti squash, Early Prolific, Galeux D’Eysines, and North Georgia Candy Roaster are the most likely possibilities.  

A small volunteer squash, one of many that has popped up this summer!

Curiosity wins out.  Three transplanted volunteer - mystery! - squash.

On a different note, an iris update.  :)  

 

Rounds With Lou

   Loulou was in a cuddly mood and stuck close today while I made my rounds of the garden. 

   The flower beds look sparse this year.  The two large Silver Mounds that we've had for years didn't survive this past winter, and half the Shasta daisy looks like it is going to croak.  I put some small dahlietta seedlings in one of the beds (those have rocks next to them in the picture) as well as a scented purple petunia (which, sadly, I suspect I am allergic to) from the greenhouse. I planted some Teddybear sunflower seeds along the back of one bed and Dwarf Hollyhock seeds along the back of the other, but haven't seen signs of them yet.  The wooly thyme looks pretty good (it's hard to go wrong with wooly thyme!) and right now it is covered with small, pink flowers.

   Most of the beans are coming up well this year, except for the Kenearly Yellow Eye beans.  Most came up, but about half were lacking the cotyledons (seedling leaves).  I pulled those and replanted, but only one of them has come up.

Lou, wanting in on the attention.

Still waiting for zucchini...

The Dolloff beans have come up (dry/pole).

Having a "salad".

Clacking at a bird?

   I can't wait to see what the Dwarf Sensation cosmos (foreground) look like when they are in bloom.  The foliage is wispy and pretty.

   The Garlic Bulbils log is updated.  I'm eager to see how the bulbs turn out at harvest time, especially the Baba Franchuk's, Kiev, and Brown Tempest varieties.

Irises Emerging