Garden 2024, June Edition

Successes, failures, and I'm not sure yets... and a note about Facebook

First an admin note for those of you who follow my Facebook gardening group, and are wondering where I’ve been…

The group is alive and well, and many members are adding fun content every day. For my part, I needed to step away from Facebook for a while. I continue to monitor things in the group and do the stuff that admins do behind the scenes, since I know that many people enjoy it. At this point, I mostly view it as a public service to the local community. But, for this season, I will be posting my own garden content here, in Garden of Words. It’s a happier place for me for now, a world of my own, molded to the form I choose, minus the slings and arrows of outrageous ideology. And I need a little of that sweet sauce to go with the sinewy fibers of daily life.

But enough of that. Let’s talk about gardening!

Lots o’ pics for ya this time, so grab a cup or glass of your favorite potable, and let’s dive right in.

My vegetable garden is really two gardens — one in large fiberglass containers and the other in a raised bed. The main garden is the former, and here it is as of 6/22/24. I’ll drill down to each container in a moment. Overall, I’m very pleased so far. The success rate isn’t 100%, but, hey, it never is. Given my limited time this spring, I can’t complain.

Roughly from front to back…

Here’s some yellow and green zucchini (one of each). I don’t always grow zucchini in the boxes, for space reasons, but my crop rotation system works out that way sometimes. The plants are doing well, although I am seeing early signs of squash bugs. I will need to monitor that. I should have the first yellow squash in the next week or so.

Moving on, we come to a case of “even fifty year gardeners can make rookie mistakes”. And in this case, I will likely pay for it with an epic eggplant fail. For the past five years I have grown a single Asian eggplant plant from saved seed. It is an amaaaaazing variety, far superior to the standard “Black Beauty” variety seen in most vegetable gardens. It produces many dozens of long, thin fruit with few seeds and far less bitterness, from mid-summer to frost. We look forward to it every year. But, alas, this year I forgot to water the plant when I transplanted it, and found it half dead the next day. The poor little plant has been struggling to recover for weeks now, without much progress. I suspect the situation is hopeless, but I will continue babying it and hoping for the best.

Up next… peppers. I usually grow 6-8 plants, sweet and hot, large and small. I’m actually growing ten plants this year; eight of them are shown here, four in each box. All are doing well. We picked the first jalapenos this week. The first sweet salad peppers should be ripening in a couple weeks. So all is looking up in Pepper Land. I’m sure Sir Paul would be happy to hear this. I’ve taken to pickling peppers the past couple years. The jars make very nice, colorful gifts at Christmas. And I’ve become fond of chopped pickled peppers in all sorts of recipes.

And that brings us to Brussels sprouts. Ugh. I don’t know, it’s been 25 years since I grew these things. And I had some success, but this time… I don’t know. The plants look “okay”, but I’m not seeing any sign of them wanting to produce anything. I’ll give it some time. But I will probably start a second round of seeds just in case, to see if a fall crop might work out better. The jury is still deliberating.

Next up, melons and basil. The basil was more a case of having some extra plants and needing to put them somewhere. The box is mainly about melons. The green poles and metal mesh are a layered support system. You can’t see it in this photo, but it is currently about nine feet high with four layers. Different variations work really well for tomatoes and melons, as the plants grow right through the structure with very little intervention or maintenance — vertical gardening at its finest. The plants are just catching on, and have not made it to the first level yet. I will likely tie some strings from the first level down to the plants, to help them get started. The plants will take care of the rest.

Which brings us to cucumbers and green beans. I wasn’t going to grow the green beans this year, but then I remembered that my dog looks forward to them, and, well, you can’t disappoint the pooch. She doesn’t have long to wait. I still need to construct a support system for the cukes. Some years I grow them in the same type of support that I use for melons, and that works really well. But I ran out of those this year. I’ll come up with something. No sign of any pests with either so far, which is nice to see. I did just add some compost to a few boxes, including this one. You would be amazed at how helpful that is with pest control, as good quality yard waste compost is typically teeming with critters that like to munch on bad guy bugs.

The kale is doing exceptionally well so far. It looks healthy, with no sign of cabbage worms or other pests that can quickly overwhelm a kale crop. I need to pick more of this stuff while it’s still good.

This box has onions on one side (a mix of a red variety and some Walla Wallas), and some super nice dill and cilantro on the other side. The latter can be hit or miss, but seem to be a major hit this year. The challenge now is to keep the swallowtail butterfly caterpillars from eating all the dill…

Similar to the last box, this one is half something and half herb combo. The “something” in this case is Swiss chard, which I love. The herbs are flat leaf parsley and some additional basil — you can’t have enough fresh basil, right?

Interesting note on the Swiss chard… One of the plants decided to go to seed. This has never happened to me before. I’m letting it go, just to see what happens. And if it does produce viable seed, will the results be a rainbow mix or a single color? Inquiring minds want to know.

This is my first round of lettuce from early spring. It is starting to bolt, so I removed some of it today (you can see some of it in the wheel barrow). That will go straight to the compost pile, to help fuel future gardens.

…but don’t fret. This is the second round of lettuce, which is doing great. I strategically planted this in a shadier area of the garden, which helps if you try to grow lettuce in warmer weather. Yeah, the current heat wave is stretching the limits of “warm”, but so far so good. You just have to provide as much water and shade as you can, and enjoy the crop while it lasts.

This is the second garden bed — a raised bed that I built around an old tree stump, long since rotted away. This year’s bed will feature the tomatoes (with one exception, below) and some winter squash (butternut and spaghetti). I still need to build a support structure for the latter. There are also a couple extra zucchini plants on the right. The tomatoes will grow into support structures that are much like the ones you saw for the melons earlier. No muss, no fuss. The plants look good so far — crossing my fingers that this isn’t a disease year. I’m growing my usual favorites this year. Burpee Supersteak, Burpee Sandwich and Golden Queen (an heirloom yellow beefsteak variety with great flavor). The bushy plant in the middle is asparagus, which is done for the season for eating and is now doing what asparagus does in the summer.

This is the view from the other side of the bed. I planted my Brazilian Starfish pepper plant in the foreground. I plant this variety separately because the plant gets very large, typically producing hundreds of small, very hot peppers that look like starfish. Excellent for pickling.

A couple miscellaneous plants… A little hard to see, but this is a Burpee Two Tasty cherry tomato plant in a pot. The support system is a smaller version of the one I use for melons and larger tomatoes. I tried this last year and it worked great. So far so good this year.

And finally, “just because”, here’s a pot of zinnias (with a little portulaca on the bottom). I saved seed from some nice zinnias that we bought from a nursery five years ago, and the seeds are still viable. Perty.

I have much more to show you, but this is all I have time for this evening. Hope you enjoyed the tour. More soon.

Enjoy the summer weather. Carpe diem.

P.S. Chapter 9 of my online book is available here.