july garden

I have peppers! These serranos are perfect for flavoring beans or lentils

and the 'yolo wonder' look great, too. My husband ate one fresh- said it was rather spicy, so we're letting them ripen more to be sweet.

They're all still in pots on the deck. Get a lot of sun here, and far from most of the bug war in the garden.

That's what it feels like, down there. We ate all the young chinese cabbage last night, from that scattering I did by accident. Full of bug holes, but tasty nonetheless.

The bed they came out of still has plenty of amaranth greens, though it seems the insects are eating most of it. I sprayed last week an insecticidal soap. It seems to have knocked out most of the whitefly, aphids and cabbage worms (though not the egg-laying white butterflies of course). However I'm daily pinching off these striped beetles I never named but recognize well now, and there's cucumber beetles too.

There's one in there, the flowering kind of amaranth- looks just like the celosia I grow elsewhere. The bugs aren't eating this one.

In that same bed I have two benne (for sesame seed). Looking rather shabby. 

But they're flowering! Trumpet shaped with a lip, quite pretty.

Starting to pick some green beans.

Other side of the garden, zucchini are failing. They don't stay green but turn yellow and rot.

My big tomatoes are still on the vines, and some of the plants are regrowing green leaves. Lots of cherry tomatoes, but many are splitting. 

However this charmed me yesterday, as I was sitting near the garden on my bench with a book. A robin poked through the garden, and then a female blackbird- quite close to me. Then a catbird came, perched on a tomato vine, and jabbed its beak into the split cherry tomato! I don't know if it was getting moisture, eating the seeds or insects from inside?