from garden to table

No cowpeas yet, but I'm still impressed at how healthy these plants look. Barely touched by the insects, while I'm picking leaf hoppers, stinkbugs and cucumber beetles off the green beans right next to them. Still no sign of little beans yet, but they've begun to send out thick runners. I put up a few poles but will need more- and taller!

One huge cucumber, and a short but very fat zucchini. 

Baked it with tomatoes from the garden! 

 Also made this lentil dish, finally cracking open one of my cookbooks. (The cucumber slices were added as an afterthought, not part of the recipe). Lentils cooked with (among many other things) peppers, bay leaf and ginger mint from the garden. Fresh basil garnish. So the meal had seven things I grew.

My kids were not too keen on the zucchini boats, but they liked the lentils! It was work to prepare but definitely worth repeating.

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?

end of june garden

Lots of things are thriving now- and the scented plants, rue on one end of the garden, marigolds, hyssop

and wormwood on the other- seem to be keeping the rabbit away so far.

I recently planted out my zucchinis,

cucumbers

and cantaloupe

Peppers growing great

And all the basils- the ruffly one, lemon basil, regular sweet basil, purple amaratto basil

I haven't used the variations on tarragon yet- just noticed the one in a pot has finely serrated edges-

We're eating leeks regularly now, and had first tomato last night. Chard almost big enough to cut now too.

Have too many chamomile plants!

Need to figure out what this plant is! the one I thought a reverted wild coleus? it's getting huge leaves.

before the heat

My golden snap peas grew taller and flopped over. I stuck bamboo poles on one side to hold them up. Pulled a handful of beets for eating today- and they're beautiful. Helped my kid plant out his herbs, and I planted one of the beds with the benne and amaranth 'calaloo'. Nasturtiums went into planter boxes on the deck railings, and peppers into larger pots to sit on the deck. I carefully disentangled the cardinal climbers from each other and set them in place alongside the new trellis- will put them in the ground tonight. I've had to do most of this in the early evening, when the day cools off, it's getting too hot otherwise. 

Still in pots to be planted out (or moved up to grow more): asters, hollyhock mallow (zebrina), tithonia, a half dozen stunted marigolds I'm not sure if it's worth the bother to find spots for them.

failures

I'm giving up on some plants. They're just so stunted from the poor soil I used when seedlings, when I couldn't buy the ProMix. Some I have repotted in better soil, or am hoping they might recover when planted into the ground soon. Others I've already thrown on the compost heap, think they'll never get over the lack of nutrients in their youth. Like the fenugreek, so pale

and all arrested in growth. My basils have okay color, but haven't grown any. The peppers have remained this size 

compared to the bought ones

Of all the alyssums, only the white one has grown any at all- every single pink and purple is stunted. Even those I planted out in the front perennial bed weeks ago, haven't grown at all.

One of my dill pots is decent

the other pathetic

Chervil also stunted. Cut a bit of it to toss into a soup but it wasn't much more than a garnish.

All the second set of marigolds have been this size, with oddly upfolded leaves, for weeks and weeks

while the few I planted earlier (decent soil) are ready to go in the garden

At least my tomatoes seem partly recovered, so I hope they might do better once in the ground

A few have little tomatoes on them already

That's not the end of it, sigh. Benne, amaranth 'calaloo', thyme, summer savory, tithonias, zebrina flower (hollyhock mallow), asters are all arrested in growth. It makes me feel ashamed, to look at all these tiny halted plants compared to same kinds I saw at the nursery just a few weeks ago. 

plants moved up

I put my new 'Arp' rosemary in a large ceramic pot-

Moved to larger pots some of the peppers, from seedling cells I bought them in. The smaller two are serrano peppers, and the four larger ones are a sweet bell called 'yolo wonder'. They're way bigger than the few I grew myself.

Pricked out ten amaranth 'calaloo' seedlings into individual pots 

purchase-

went to two of my favorite local nurseries today. Might visit the third tomorrow. Most glad to find an 'Alba' rosemary- different variety than those I've bought- and failed to bring thru the winter- before.

Also got several peppers, one stevia, one tarragon, 'wicked witch' coleus, and then I succumbed to the charm of some geraniums. They're not scented. But I got five kinds, ha.

Also got two new blanket flower plants (found out they only live two or three years, so no surprise mine didn't come up again), two persian shield plants (which I read about in a book on using tropicals in the landscape), and two pink salvias. Seen here on the floor in front. That's my crowd brought in from the cold at night.

Feels like a bigger crowd now, because I also did a lot of repotting when I got home- the plantman gave me some discarded four-inch pots. I pricked out of trays nasturtiums, fenugreek, basils, sesame (benne), thyme, and summer savory. But it still wasn't enough pots. A bunch of my marigolds looked stunted, the tomatoes and alyssum yellowish foliage. I think not so much due to crammed roots in the smaller paper pots, but poor soil- earlier in the season I bought some bagged potting soil from Target that was a brand I used to like. But it wasn't as I remembered- this stuff was very dry, smelled and felt like shredded wood. No hummus. I tried using it anyway but I think some of the plants have done poorly since. So I repotted the marigolds into plastic pots with new soil (better quality!) from today's nursery, and moved up the smaller, less-needy herbs into the vacated paper pots. Never done that before. 

The yellow-ish tomatoes just got a top dressing of the new soil. Should be the darker green color of the marigold far left (in my opinion). I think they'll do much better once in the ground- a few weeks to go still.

miscellaneous garden stuff

Few days ago potted up my one and only pepper plant,

and the sunberry

Zucchini plants have first true leaves, cukes and cantaloupe soon

Purple pole beans are well and ready to go out! but it must be a bit warmer first

I cut too many dill sprigs for my eggs the other day, and stuck an extra one in a bit of water. It's still fresh several days later!

Funny, I found a sweet pea growing in the back perennial bed among the echinacea. Wonder if it sprouted from seed off last year's plant, or the perennial one I had before.