Jul 19

Jul 19 Garden Journal - July 19, 2016

More plants in back you can't see in the first picture. (Chairs are to protect plants from the flying basketball from the neighbor's games in their driveway.)

The Garden Beds along the side - WAY overgrown

I'm just going to come right out and say that I'm feeling a little garden envy these days. I think the beginning of the "summer harvest" time feels this way for me. I am so excited for what's growing in my garden. Everything feels great, and then.....I see pictures of what other people in my zone are harvesting in their small gardens and I can't help but think, "How did they get eggplant so soon? Mine are just starting to show signs of fruit." or "How come they have a barrel of cucumbers, but I've only had a few?" Stupid, right? Truth is, I'm so excited to see other people gardening and growing their own food. Ehhh... I think I'm just an impatient person when it comes to gardening. I've got to work on that.

This is the beginning of the peak season for most things I'm growing. I've had some smaller cherry (Sun Gold) tomatoes in the last few weeks, but got my first big "Jersey-Sized" tomato - one of my Caiman tomatoes. Sliced it up with some mozzarella and basil from the garden....Yum. I have a few Monica tomatoes ripening, so within the next week or so, I'll be taking those in too.

What's visibly growing in the garden now:

Sweet Banana Peppers
Lady Bell Peppers
Sunflowers, Marigolds and Nasturtium
Eggplant (just the beginnings)
Cucumber
Zucchini
Yellow Squash
Beans
Peas

My VERY first tomatoes of the season - Sun Gold tomatoes

What's NOT doing well?

The two yellow squash I harvested actually were a little tough. I tried baking them and it just didn't work well. So, I have a few more squash growing. I'll try to make sure they pollinate well with hand-pollination to get good fruit.
Lettuce - it's starting to bolt. So, I planted some new lettuce from seed tape. Will see how that goes. Squirrels often dig up loose seeds I plant so I'm hoping this will help.
Cucumbers - My plants are totally overgrown (see the video), but I've gotten three Jackson cucumbers, good for pickling. So far, just made refrigerator pickles with them. (Haven't tasted them yet...)
One of my Caiman tomatoes had blossom end rot. I plucked it off and fed the soil with some calcium in the form of eggshells. The others growing on that plant look OK for now, so I hope they're OK.
The potatoes seem to have gotten really scraggly. I think some white flies got to them, but it's also sort of natural for them to get this way too. I went through this last year, as you can see from my "Potato Harvest Day" post last year. Still optimistic I'll get a great harvest.

This is the first season I'm growing flowers, which is working out really well. I'm particularly happy with my sunflowers. As you may have seen earlier, I had a VERY bad slug problem. They were demolishing the sunflower leaves. I took care of them with some beer and eggshells and thankfully, the plants recovered.

I also started composting! I've wanted to do this for a while and finally got down to doing it. I assembled a tumbler and have a pail in the kitchen to collect scraps. I can't believe how much "waste" I'm reusing now that will be returned to the soil.

Well, that's it for now. Hoping I'll be able to report an abundant harvest in my next entry!