Thought I would share some pictures from our garden projects from July.
This is part of my Garden 2017 series of posts. You can see the earlier posts at:
Garden 2017 Update February Through May
This has been the hottest summer we have ever seen. The temperatures have been in the 90’s everyday and though we had a wet spring, and the plants put on a lot of stems and leaves, they didn’t produce much actual fruit. We haven’t seen any rain for several weeks and have had intense heat and the garden isn’t producing as much fruit and vegetables as I had hoped. The heat has really taken it’s toll.
July 8, 2017
Garden Bed A
Garden Bed B
Romano tomatoes are still mostly green.
But some starting to turn orange and we have had a few of them turn red. The rest of them should be ready for harvest soon. With the heat we are having, I don’t know how long the plants can handle the intense sun and heat and if they will put on any more blooms or not.
Butternut squash.
We think these could be a kind of pumpkins, but not sure. We have not grown these before.
Zucchini
The sunflowers are almost ready to bloom.
July 12, 2017
Okra is on its second set of blooms.
Okra is a delicious food!
Pink petunias in the garden.
Romano tomatoes in the garden are ready to harvest. So far, only a few have been ready every couple of days.
The kids take turns mowing the grass.
July 13, 2017
Zucchini ready for harvest.
We had a cookout and grilled some of our garden veggies including zucchini, yellow squash, red onions, Romano tomatoes, okra, and we cut up fresh cucumbers and later we made smores.
All of the fresh food was delicious and it was a beautiful summer evening to enjoy spending time together.
July 27, 2017
We are still thinking these could be a kind of pumpkin. I am used to a pumpkin that starts out green and then turns orange. However, these start out as smooth yellow balls and then turn a peach color.
Zinnias in the garden.
Red Romano tomatoes.
Bees hiding out on the squash blossoms.
Small watermellons. Several have already been eaten by something before they get any bigger than a baseball. The plants are struggling in the heat and many of the leaves and stems have died.
A few of the sunflowers in Garden B have bloomed.
The sweet potatoes in the corner of Garden B are not doing much. I think it has been too hot for them.
More of the round yellow orbs that might become pumpkins. I have never seen a plant send out so many runners and then every foot or so it has another set of roots it sends into the ground. Some of these runners are 30 foot long and loaded with blossoms, yet seem to only produce 1 actual fruit ball. I don’t know if it is behaving this way because of the extreme heat or if this is normal for this plant because I have not grown this species before.
It is lovely to listen to the frogs and cicadas even though it has been so hot.
Found these wild grapes had dropped on the ground, just below the garden. They are growing 30 feet up in the trees, so I wont be able to harvest them. We saw about 50 grapes had dropped. Some of the grapes were green.
Some of the grapes were purple. We accidentally stepped on some too.
Our tomato harvest! The harvest is small, but not too bad from our small garden.
Found a cricket hiding upside down on the cucumber plants.
Harvesting cucumbers.
I am thankful we have had several cucumbers ripen daily all summer long. There hasn’t been a day go by this summer that we didn’t have lots of cucumbers on the kitchen counter and sliced up for supper.
Mint is in bloom.
The kids decided we needed to give a few plants some water. We planted some Brandywine Heirloom tomatoes and bell peppers where the onions and lettuce used to be. We hope they make it through this heat and put on some fruit soon before it is too late.
The kids found a baby lizard and spent some time holding it and letting it crawl up their arms before setting it free on a tree trunk.
The petunia plants in the barrel planters are almost dead. Most of the green of the plants is gone or turned to brown. But this week it put on new blooms almost to say to the heat, “I’m not done yet!” A butterfly had stopped in for a drink of the nectar in this photo.
Pink lilacs that are 20 feet tall put on blooms this week at the very top. They bloomed earlier this year and I was surprised to see them bloom again.
Pink petunias in the garden are still blooming.
Sunflowers along the driveway.
Today’s harvest is small. This is the last of the Romano tomatoes. The plants looked brown and nearly dead from the heat when we picked these. But I was thrilled to bring in this harvest.
