garden

First the good. I harvested sweet pea seeds to save

and tatsoi (so many!)

Lavender is done flowering, so I cut it back. Chopped up all the trimmed stems, leaves and flowers, scattered on the beds of amaranth calaloo and leaf beet chard / cowpeas. I think some bugs don't like the scent! A few striped beetles immediately took flight away from the bed onto collards. I tracked with my eyes and smacked 'em.

The cowpea, bush green bean and leaf beet chard bed:

with collard greens behind:

I trimmed out over half the leaves of the sorrel- because they looked sickly- leaving more room for the sage and lemon balm now. Tarragon has grown nice! I used some in a soup but a bit too much, my kid complained the flavor was strong

Then moved on to a dismal chore: cleaning up all the wilted foliage. Carrots- all looking dead and brown-

but the smallest inner leaves are fine. And I pulled one- the root is fine. No rot. So I don't think it was the downpour.

What's left of my tomatoes, after I cut off all the brown and yellow and wilted leaves. Dreadfully familiar, this. At least now you can see how many tomatoes I have! But I don't know if they'll be okay.

I didn't find any pests on the tomato or carrot plants, but startled a few stinkbugs in the zucchini and cucumbers. After clearing out half the zucchini leaves that were rotting or blanched of color, this is what's left. It looks so leggy and open now.

But maybe enough still healthy to recover. Here's one zucchini growing!

On the opposite end of that bed, what's left of the lovage (that towered over my head just a few days ago)

I haven't been out here enough the past two weeks, to keep ahead of the bugs. There's whitefly and cabbage loopers on the collard greens. Leaf hoppers in the chard and green beans. Some kind of beetle in the amaranth, and slugs in several places. I have biodegradable, organic insecticidal soap, but can't use it in hot sunny weather or it will cause leaf burn. We have several more days of sun before it rains again. I'm considering coming out to spray the plants very early in the morning, before it's hot- and then hose them down after . . .