Senior Gardening

One of the Joys of Maturity


Affiliated Advertisers

 

Clicking through one of our banner ads or some of our text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale.

The Old Guy's Garden Record

July 16, 2020


Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Our Senior Garden - July 1, 2020AmazonI didn't get much gardening done in today's heat and humidity. But I'd resolved to correct one issue that has bothered me all spring.

Every time I've taken our near daily splashshot that tops this page, I've been annoyed that a young maple tree's branches obscured part of our narrow raised bed of Earlirouge tomatoes. So I got out my pruning supplies and removed the offending branches. Unfortunately, the nozzle on my can of Spectracide Aerosol Pruning Seal was clogged. I began soaking it in alcohol, but also ordered a new can of it.

As we move into full summer, I'm excited by the harvests to come. We'll certainly be picking green beans soon. We'll also dig garlic and spring carrots. And from the looks of our Earlirouge tomato plants, we'll be enjoying BLTs by mid-month. But looking at our current ten day extended weather forecast, I'll also be hauling lots of water to our garden plots.

Butternut vine outgrowing mulchButternut leaf showing powdery mildewWhen I took some spent pea vines out to dump on our compost pile, I saw that our butternut squash were outgrowing their initial grass clipping mulching. I added more mulch around them, but also noticed the beginnings of powdery mildew on one of the South Anna Butternut plants. South Anna's are supposed to be resistant to downy mildew. I guess that doesn't extend to powdery mildew! Both the butternut and pumpkin plants got a thorough spraying with Serenade biofungicide.

Note that I have again omitted a link to Serenade. Vendors who have the excellent product in stock are still price gouging, charging two to four times the normal price!

Botanical Interests Burpee Gardening Required FTC Disclosure Statement: Botanical Interests, Burpee, and True Leaf Market are some of our Senior Gardening affiliate advertisers. Clicking through one of our ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale. We're also a consumer member of the Fedco Seeds Cooperative. True Leaf Market Fedco Seeds
 
 

Thursday, July 2, 2020 - Bad News, Good News

Deer found our sweet corn last night. I thought I was ready for them, having spread chips of Ivory Spring bar soap around the planting. But it had rained, which seems to cut the effectiveness of the soap's odor. While the deer nipped the tops off some corn and uprooted some other plants, we still have enough corn to produce a nice crop...if we can keep the deer out of the patch. The nipped plants may not tassel, but could still produce ears. And fortunately, I hadn't yet thrown out the backup corn transplants I'd started.

Sweet corn nipped by deer

After surveying the damage, I grabbed our organic sprayer and loaded it up with Not Tonight, Deer! The deer repellent I'd mixed a year ago May smelled even worse than it did last year. I put a heavy spray of it on both our sweet corn and kidney beans.

Minnesota Midget cantaloupe hill damagedPassport honeydew plants uprootedI also found that a couple of our melon hills had been damaged overnight, presumably by deer. Since the melons were mulched, there were no incriminating deer tracks around the melon hills like there were in the unmulched sweet corn patch.

Our hill of Minnesota Midget cantaloupe had been roughed up, but one plant may survive. The plants in our hill of Passport honeydew had all been uprooted. I stuck the rootballs back in the ground, but they probably won't make it. I added seed to each hill.

The Good News

Re-seeded hill of Kazakh honeydew upVolunteer gloriosa daisy by mailboxOur hill of Kazakh honeydew that I re-seeded recently has three plants up. I not sure if I put three or four seeds in the ground to replace the plants that apparently died of natural causes. But we have three seedlings up.

Normally, I have a few replacement plants left over from our transplanting. I went a little crazy this year with our melon patch, putting in every melon transplant I had. I even cut out a couple of rows of potatoes from our original East Garden plan to make room for more melons. And actually, I'm not sure my old knees would hold up to all the digging involved in harvesting potatoes.

The surprise good news of the day was by our rural route box. As I drove up to get our mail, there was a volunteer daisy in bloom by the mailbox post!

After replacing plants and scuffle hoeing a bit, I surrendered pretty quickly to the heat and humidity today. While I really need to mow the lawn, I also still need to do our taxes! Yep, I'm a procrastinator. So as I wrote this afternoon, I was also downloading TurboTax updates.

Burpee Herb Seeds & Plants

Friday, July 3, 2020

I got an early start on gardening this morning to beat the mid-day heat. When I got out to the East Garden, I was dismayed to find that another hill of melons had been mauled. The Tam Dew honeydew plants weren't apparently eaten, but were torn apart. With Tam Dews being a hundred day variety, there isn't enough growing season left for me to re-seed them into the hill. Instead, I seeded some Passport honeydew, as they're just a 73 days-to-maturity variety.

I again sprayed our sweet corn with Not Tonight, Deer! I also sprayed our melon vines and spread Irish Spring soap chips around them.

I watered, scuffle hoed, and mulched for a couple of hours in the East Garden.

As I returned to the house, I brought what was left of our last bale of peat moss with me. After a short break, I hoed in peat moss, lime, and fertilizer between our double trellis where our cucumbers will go. I optimistically began watering the bed from our sixty gallon rain barrel. Although the barrel was pretty full, the watering barely made a dent in the dryness of the half of the bed watered!

Cucumber bed in main raised bed prepared

Since I've been using a double trellis for a few years for our early peas followed by cucumbers, I've gotten the bed prep down pat. I raise the bottom wire of the trellis on one side. That gives me access to hoe in soil improvements. I also take time to tighten the clothesline wires that hold up the trellis, as the wire stretches in warm weather.

I'll probably start my gardening day tomorrow by watering the rest of the cucumber bed. I may transplant cukes into it if I can before it gets too hot. With our daily highs now in the 90s, it's no time to transplant in the heat of the day.

Spinach plants full of seed falling overAbundant Bloomsdale spinach stalk filled with seedAfter lunch and a short nap, I braved the heat and went out and snipped off Abundant Bloomsdale spinach stems laden with seed. I actually waited a bit too long to do this chore, as several of the plants had fallen over and/or begun dropping their seed. But I got a lot of stems filled with seed clusters. I later spent some time pulling the clusters off the stems and rubbing them between my fingers to separate the seed. When my fingers got sore from the task, I put the separated seed on a cookie sheet to dry and the stems in a paper grocery bag hung in our plant room to dry.

Things are getting really busy here. Trying not to work outside in the heat of the day, I'm not getting stuff done as I'd like.

Our lawn desperately needs to be mowed. Once the mowing is done, I'll need to switch out the lawn tractor from the mower deck to our pull-type rototiller, as weeds are trying to overwhelm our East Garden plot.

But mowing and tilling will have to wait, as our green beans are ready for a first light picking. There's no reason to put in the effort growing vegetables only to pick them when they're overripe. I might even dig a few baby carrots for a delicious side dish of steamed green beans and carrots seasoned with fresh garlic.

Our garlic is also ready to be dug. I may steal an early bulb for the green beans and carrots, but it too, can wait. The garlic certainly won't rot in the ground as dry as things are.

These are the nice kinds of gardening problems to have.

Have a wonderful Fourth of July. And keep a mask on when out and/or maintain social distance.

Saturday, July 4, 2020 - Fourth of July (U.S.) - Transplanting Cucumbers (and Snapdragons)

Transplanting cucumbers and snapdragonsLots of Japanese Long Pickling cucumbersI transplanted nine Japanese Long Pickling cucumbers and several snapdragons between the netting of our double trellis this morning. The Japanese Long Pickling variety is one we've worked for years to preserve. It produces lots of very long, straight (well, sometimes straight) cucumbers that are good for slicing, but better for pickling. We mostly use them for bread and butter pickles and sweet pickle relish. The first ripe cucumber usually gets chilled, sliced, and consumed with a bit of ranch dressing.

I began the transplanting session by watering the sixteen inch by fifteen foot planting area. I used a sprinkler can for the watering so as not to leave any depressions in the soil. About fifteen gallons of water wet the soil to about two inches down.

Each cucumber plant got a hole that had a gallon of transplanting solution added. After pushing the transplants into the soil and firming it around them, I also watered around each plant. With daily temperatures predicted to stay in the 90s for the next week, I'll have to baby these plants, watering them each day.

Cucumbers transplanted and trellis in place

Our strain of the Japanese Long Pickling cucumber variety came from one lone seed I'd saved for years. After a few years, inbreeding depression set in. I was lucky to find that Reimer Seeds carried the variety, although a slightly different strain than ours. I added a plant or two of their strain to serve as pollinators a few years ago. Our strain of the cucumber variety regained its vitality without losing its favorable characteristics.

JLP packet front JLP packet back

I offer 2018 seed for the Japanese Long Pickling cucumber variety via the Grassroots Seed Network and the Seed Savers Member Exchange. Since our 2019 crop suffered the same tragic error last year as did our Earlirouge tomatoes, getting a good seed crop this year is really important to me.

I always like to plant a few snapdragons along our trellis of cucumbers. While the cukes often overgrow the snaps, they eventually outlive the cucumber vines, producing beautiful fall displays of blooms. Our snapdragons this year are from some seed saved last year and from the Madame Butterflyicon variety.

Green beans ready to pickI did a light picking of green beans today. I saw that I could pick yesterday. Our three shorter day varieties were ready to pick, while our other, longer day varieties weren't quite there yet. I also pulled a fat onion to season the beans, telling me that it won' be long before we harvest onions.

The beans snapped and canned to five and a half pints. That's not a lot, but for a light first picking, I'm satisfied. Fortunately, so far, we have not experienced an influx of Japanese Beetles which can devastate a bean crop.

Besides some of our onions, our garlic seems ready to dig. It's time for me to set up our makeshift drying/curing table in the garage.

Despite the heat and humidity this afternoon, I finally got our lawn mowed. It was hard to tell where I'd mowed in some dryer parts of the yard while I left heaps of grass clippings in other areas.

The Home Depot

Sunday, July 5, 2020

Tilling East GardenAnother view of our East GardenToday's first job was tilling down weeds in the aisles between our rows of crops in our East Garden. Well actually, the first job was an hour's work required to switch out our lawn tractor from its mower deck to our pull-type rototiller. While our current dry spell presents some challenges in keeping stuff going, it also makes for good tilling conditions.

I was pleased to see that we'd not had any more critter damage to our sweet corn or melons overnight.

Our sweet corn was ready today for its first fertilization and cultivation. With our 36" row spacing, I use our walking tiller to cultivate, turning in a little 12-12-12 sidedressed along the rows. The walking tiller has the advantage of having one shield missing which allows soil to be thrown into an adjacent row to bury small weeds without burying the corn. Later in the day, I realized that I'd probably tilled in all of our smelly Irish Spring bar soap deer deterrent, so I went back out (in a hundred degree heat index) and cut up a bar and a half of the soap around our sweet corn and kidney beans.

Sweet corn with Irish Spring chips

Slick Pik yellow squash ripeningEncore peas upAfter three hours of mechanical work and tilling this morning, I was done for the day. And that was before it really got hot out.

I did notice with some delight that we have some yellow squash ripening. Our two other Slick Pik plants have blooms on them.

I'm also pleased to see our Encore peas came up well. Sadly, the supersweet Eclipse peas planted at the other end of the row totally failed. I'm undecided whether to re-seed, start transplants inside, or wait until next year for the Eclipse peas. Poor germination has always been one of their problems.

Even though the Encores are a short pea variety, they'll get a short trellis to climb on. Keeping the pea pods up off the ground prevents rot and makes for better seed saving.

Whether it's the Eclipse or Encore pea variety, I'm hoping to be able to share supersweet pea seed with other gardeners once the Seminis/Monsanto/Bayer PVP plant patents expire!

Free Shipping on Orders over $35

Monday, July 6, 2020 - Digging Garlic

Our bed of garlicGarlic ScapesI dug our garlic this afternoon. The leaves of the garlic were beginning to brown. Some plants had put up scapes, a garlic form of asexual reproduction. And some plants had fallen or been knocked over.

Some folks say snapping off the scapes increases the size of the garlic bulbs. I'd snapped off a few of the scapes weeks ago, but left the rest simply because I like the way they look when they "bloom." While I've never tried them, garlic scapes are supposed to be good to eat.

Digging really isn't the right term for what I did today. Like with harvesting carrots, one puts a heavy garden fork deep in the soil beside the garlic bulb and lifts by pulling the handle back towards oneself. If you get deep enough, the lever action lifts the garlic, often with a gigantic soilball around its roots.

Huge clump of soil with rootballOur current dry spell worked for me in two ways this afternoon. First, none of the garlic showed any signs of rot. Second, the dry soil was a lot lighter to dig or lift than wet soil would have been.

We ended up getting 73 good garlic bulbs out of the about 80 I planted last fall. Actually, the garlic didn't get planted until December 26, the latest I've ever planted it. Combined with our recent dry spell, the late planting produced much smaller elephant garlic than usual. Our regular garlic was about its usual size. The smaller garlic size could also be due to my omitting adding bone meal under the garlic sets. The bone meal seemed to draw moles to our previous plantings.

It was 91° F (heat index 99° F) when I came in from digging, but there was an occasional gust of refreshing wind while I worked. I dug a little more than half of the garlic before taking a much needed rehydration break.

As usual, I set up drying/curing table in the garage, once again mentally thanking my wonderful wife for the heavy duty sawhorses she gave me.

Makeshift drying/curing table

I also opened the garage windows and turned on an ancient box fan I keep in the garage to keep some air movement going over the garlic.

Note that it's important to leave the leaves on the garlic as it cures. In the past when pressed for space, I've trimmed the garlic prematurely with less than wonderful results. The leaves apparently help the garlic bulbs cure.

For more information on growing garlic, see:

Terracotta Composting 50-Plant Garden Tower by Garden Tower Project

Tuesday, July 7, 2020 - Surprises

Our Senior Garden - July 7, 2020Snake under plant lightsI got a couple of surprises this morning. The first came as I reached for a tray of transplants under our plant lights. A black snake was laying across the plants! I grabbed my camera and got a shot of it. But before I could grab a burlap bag to catch the thing in and put it in our garden, the snake fell off the shelf and hid under our plant rack.

The second surprise was much more pleasant than the first. I'd been out watering our tomatoes and peppers in our East Garden plot. As I started up our back steps, I saw and heard a few raindrops hit the top of a trash can. In just a few minutes, a pop-up thundershower came through. While it seemed to rain fairly hard for a few minutes, our rain gauge showed only about a tenth of an inch of precipitation.

Earlier, while running water for our peppers and tomatoes, I began picking green beans. But sadly, after the rain, the plants are wet. Picking through wet bean plants can spread plant diseases, so the beans will have to wait.

Renee's Garden

Thursday, July 9, 2020 - Green Beans

Snapping beansWatching the pressure gaugeI'm keeping an eye on the pressure gauge of our pressure canner as I write this evening. I picked green beans this morning, snapped them this afternoon, and am now canning them. I canned the first batch of eight pints with a bit of ham for seasoning in them. Adding meat to the beans pushes the canning time up from twenty to seventy-five minutes. As I'm wearing down from the day, the second batch of six pints will just be beans seasoned with onions (from our garden, of course).

This was our second picking of green beans, as I did a light picking on Saturday of our three earliest varieties (Providericon [50], Contendericon [50], and Strike [53]). There were good beans today on all six of the bean varieties I planted, although the two latest varieties (Maxibel [61] and Bush Blue Lakeicon [57]) will need a few more days before they fully come in. Curiously, our Burpee's Stringless Green Podicon (50) plants had lush foliage, but very few beans.

We're going to get at least one more picking of green beans. Usually, I pull the plants as I make our third picking, but with the light first picking, we'll probably get a fourth picking this year.

Our how-to, Growing Beans, tells how we grow ours.

If you're new to canning green beans, it's hard to beat the Ball Book of Canning and Preserving. There is a short version of canning beans online.

David's Cookies

Saturday, July 11, 2020

Our Senior Garden - July 11, 2020
Our Senior Garden - July 10, 2020

We've had a couple of lovely days of late. Today was a bit hotter than yesterday when we had a slightly cooler day with a pleasant brisk breeze. Being a persistent procrastinator, I had to work on taxes both days, as I'd put off that unpleasant task with the July 15 filing extension due to the coronavirus.

I did haul compost to our compost pile yesterday and scuffled weeds a bit, but my back let me know I'd done too much stoop work when picking our green beans on Thursday.

The green beans canned out to fourteen pints. Thirteen of the jars sealed properly with one going into the fridge for future use. With seventeen pints in our pantry now, we're close to having enough put up to last the winter. That's a far cry from when we used to can thirty to forty quarts of beans when we had kids at home.

Burpee Seed CompnayAn email this week from Burpee Seed reminded me that folks who want to plant garlic this fall should place their orders for garlic soon. Sellers often run out of the most favored varieties by late July or early August.

While the cost of Garlic bulbs may seem a bit steep, it can be pretty much a one time investment. After each crop comes in, one can save the best of their harvest for re-planting the next fall. In actual practice, I sometimes buy fresh garlic if our saved garlic seems to have lost its vitality and vigor. When looking at our garlic curing in the garage today, I noticed that we had hardly any garlic bulbs with split wrappers, something that hints of early rot of the garlic.

When I was canning beans on Thursday, I ran out of regular mouth canning lids and had to switch to wide mouth jars. I had plenty of wide mouth lids on hand. When I shopped for more lids today at Walmart, a local grocery, and a Dollar Store, they were all out! Online, regular mouth lids were priced at three times their normal price. I finally found some still overpriced but less so on Amazon. With more green beans and tomatoes still to can, I'll need lots more canning lids in the next month or so.

I had to poke my head outside between paragraphs, as the tornado warning sirens were sounding. We could use a good rain (but not a tornado) as we're still in the "Abnormally Dry" classification according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. From looking at the online weather radar, the storm is a good bit north of us.

Pumpkin vines

Just after noon today, I noticed some of the leaves on our pumpkin and butternut vines looked a bit droopy. They weren't quite at the day wilting stage, but were showing definite signs of heat and moisture stress. When I went out to get a picture of the deflated leaves this evening, they'd recovered somewhat. We'll need to haul water to our vining crops tomorrow morning if we don't get some rain tonight.

Terre Haute Federal PenitentiaryWinding down a mostly non-gardening posting, our area is about to become famous, or rather infamous, again soon. The federal government has scheduled several executions for next week at the Terre Haute Penitentiary. That always draws lots of pro- and anti-death penalty protesters to the area. The prison is on our way to Terre Haute on Indiana 63, but the highway will be closed in front of the prison on the days of the executions.

Carrots and green beans steamingI still have a photo I took of the old prison a few days before Timothy McVeigh was executed in 2001. A newer, maximum security prison has been built since then, but death row is still housed in the old prison with the execution chamber housed in a separate building. While there were reporters everywhere that day, I was quickly hustled out of the area by security who threatened to take my camera. I lied and said I hadn't gotten a picture yet. Sad as that is, the camera belonged to the school I was then teaching at.

On a brighter note, I have fresh green beans and carrots steaming with garlic on the stove as part of a late supper for tonight.

And while the tornado sirens have gone off, we're getting a good shower right now.

Required FTC Disclosure Statement

Some of our text links go to the sites of our Senior Gardening Advertisers. Clicking through one of our banner ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale.

Monday, July 13, 2020

Ragged looking green bean rowsBeans ready to pickOur green bean rows are beginning to look a bit ragged after two pickings. But when I pulled back the leaves at the end of the rows, there were obviously beans that needed picking. So I did what turned out to be another light picking of green beans this afternoon. I only got a little over a gallon of beans from the picking despite our getting over an inch of rain this weekend. That's not enough beans to merit getting out the pressure canner, so these beans will get blanched, trimmed, cut into two inch sections, and frozen. Frozen green beans are part of a couple of related recipes while my wife and I were dating that she named "seduction fish" and "seduction chicken."

While picking beans today, it was impossible not to notice that a lot of our onion plants had toppled over. While storms over the weekend helped them blowing over, falling over is also a sign the onions are about ready for harvest.

Onions falling over Carrot, onion, celery, and lettuce (now out) row

Storage onions on drying tableWalmartI did a Google search today for "curing onions." The first listing that came up from the search was by gardening expert, Barbara Pleasant: Curing Onions for Storage. She recommends leaving the tops on the onions for some time and drying/curing them in a warm shady area. That's about what we've done in the past, curing the onions on a makeshift drying table in our garage. But this year, our drying/curing table is now covered with garlic, so I may have to scrunch things together when I harvest the onions.

We had our annual BLT celebration of our first ripe tomatoes last night. Actually, I'd added a couple of small ripe tomatoes a couple of days ago to some ham and beans. But our bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches last night were made with three small Earlirouge tomatoes. The tomatoes I picked actually yielded enough sliced tomatoes that I had leftover tomato on a cheeseburger for lunch today with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise. As always, the taste of our first ripe tomatoes was incredible.

I was late watering our gloxinias on our dining room table recently and all the blooms wilted. Fortunately, the plants and some of the blooms quickly recovered after a good watering producing lots of nice blooms.

Gloxinias in bloom on our dining room table

I have one full shelf of gloxinias under our plant lights downstairs still coming into bloom. Each summer, we enjoy having a table full of gloxinias in bloom. They're not hard to grow, but do take a little time now and then.

White gloxinia Double gloxinia blooms

Related items:

Hardware World

Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - Carrots

Onions and carrots ready to harvestCarrots in garden cartI direct seeded our spring carrots on April 25. The days since then add up to way more than the varieties seeded days-to-maturity figures, but the carrots were slow to come up this year and have been limited by a lack of rain. Having dug a few test carrots from the end of the rows, I thought our carrots were ready to come out. I was wrong. The carrots could have benefitted from staying in the ground another week or two.

What we got was several pounds of rather small, thin carrots. Looking at it optimistically, you could call them gourmet carrots. Even though I hadn't thinned the carrots very well, we had few splits and also very little bug damage. I used a heavy garden fork driven into the ground beside the carrots to lift the carrots and loosen the soil around them. The carrots came out of the rather dry ground very easily. They got a quick rinse in a bucket of water before going into our garden cart. I later soaked the carrots in the cart for an hour or so before rinsing them a couple more times.

Since I've cut down the amount of spring carrots I sow, this light harvest may prove to be the right amount. In the past when I spring planted a fifteen foot double row of carrots, I always had lots left over when our fall crop came in. This year's double eight foot row should prevent the disappointing and wasteful practice of having to throw away extra spring carrots.

Our varieties planted are all favorites that have grown well for us in the past: Laguna, Mokumicon, Nelson, Scarlet Nantes, and Yaya. While in a week or so, we'll plant some of these varieties again for our fall carrots, we'll also add some varieties known for their winter storage: Bolero, Naval, and Napoli. I think most of these varieties are Nantes type carrots.

Busy Day

Along with the carrot harvest that dominated the day, I mowed and raked the one acre field next to us. I also cultivated our sweet corn and used the walking tiller to work up the narrow raised bed where our garlic had grown. After digging the carrots, I pulled some onions that had fallen over and whose leaves had dried a bit. The onions got crowded onto our drying/curing table in the garage with the garlic that was already there. And I mulched our newly transplanted Japanese Long Pickling cucumber plants.

As I said, it was a busy day. But there was a reason for that, as there are thunderstorms tonight giving us a much needed rain. I hustled today trying to do as much as possible before the rain came.

Hoss Tools & Seed

Thursday, July 16, 2020 - Fall Garden Planning

Dave's Garden Frost Page for 47882Our first frost date here is October 17, leaving us with just over ninety days left in the growing season. One can find their first and last frost dates by entering their zip code on a page on the Dave's Garden site. Using that frost date and vegetable varieties' days-to-maturity figures (plus about two weeks to account for the shorter days in late summer) can tell one when to plant. It also can give you a wave off if there's not enough growing season left for a crop to mature.

An easier method of deciding what one can still plant and grow as a fall crop is the Fall-Harvest Planting Calculator (381k XLS file) from Johnny's Selected Seeds' Planning Tools and Calculators page. It's a spreadsheet that you enter your first frost date into and the spreadsheet calculates the last dates one can safely plant various garden crops. It automatically adds in a couple of weeks to account for shorter daylength in late summer.

Below is a screenshot of their calculator I did this morning.

Johnny's Fall Planting Calculator

If you don't have a spreadsheet program such as Excel on your computer, Open Office is a free, open source one that can do the job.

Peas and Kale

Raised bed planted to peas down the center and kale along the sidesShallow furrow made by 1x4 boardI transplanted peas and direct seeded kale today into our narrow raised bed that recently had our garlic in it. After dumping a little peat moss on the soil and tilling it in yesterday, some rain last night made the bed about perfect for planting.

The pea transplants were a mix of Eclipse, Encore, and Garden Sweeticon. I put them down the center of the 3' x 15' raised bed. I also poked in some Eclipse seed between the transplants. I'm hoping the mix of peas will improve the vigor of our saved seed. And of course, all three varieties are supersweet peas, so some will end up on our table and in our freezer.

When planting fine seeded crops such as kale or carrots, I use an old scrap of 1" x 4" lumber that broke off a few years ago. It has a pointed edge that I run down the prospective row to make a half inch deep planting furrow. You can see the furrow better and even some seed treated green in the larger version of the shot.

Over half of the kale planted was Vates or Dwarf Blue Curled Scotch. They're both about the same variety, but with different names. Either way, they're our favorite kale. For some variety, I also seeded Judy's Kale, Purple Moon, Lacinato and Rainbow Lacinato, and Red Ursa, a giant leaved kale featured at the top of Our Best Garden Photos of 2013 page.

Red Ursa Kale

My original garden plan for the narrow raised bed was to grow fall broccoli and cauliflower in it. We had a good spring harvest of both and froze a lot, so I'm not growing them this fall. That opened up the bed for the kale. The peas were a hopefully bright idea. I've not grown peas and kale together like this in an intensive planting.

I still need to get some spinach, lettuce, and our fall carrots planted. From the Johnny's calculator above, you can see that I have about a week to get our green beans and onions harvested and the area tilled to get our carrots in. I'll probably pull the bean plants tomorrow, stripping off any good beans still on them. Where to go with the onions is a problem I have as yet to solve, as our drying/curing table is filled.

Green beans and onions still in main raised bed Drying/curing table filled with garlic and onions

It's About Time!

With many governors refusing to issue statewide mask requirements even though cases of Covid-19 are surging in their respective states, I was glad to see that Walmart and Sam's Club will begin on Monday requiring all customers to wear a face mask. I've been aghast seeing three-fourths of the customers in our Sullivan (IN) Walmart not wearing a face mask. Many of those unmasked customers were clearly in the high risk group due to age or other obvious physical problems.

Rollbacks & Clearance Sam’s Club

Friday, July 17, 2020

Main raised bed - July 17, 2016I'm babysitting the pressure canner gauge again tonight. I did a final picking of our two rows of green beans today. I pulled the plants and stripped the good beans off of them. I was a bit surprised that some of the plants had begun to bloom again, probably encouraged by a recent quarter inch of rain.

Drought Monitoer for Indiana - July 16, 2020The beans filled just six pint jars for canning. Our bean production this year has obviously been negatively impacted by the dry weather. The U.S. Drought Monitor has now classed our area as in a "Moderate Drought." In a normal year, we'd get about double the beans we picked this year, but with today's canning, we have enough canned green beans to last us through the winter.

While watching over the canner, I cut five Earlirouge tomatoes, squeezing their seed and gel into a canning jar. I'll let the seed ferment for 3-4 days before rinsing and drying it. The tomatoes cut were all ones that had split their sides, something that often happens after a dry spell followed by rain.

I give step-by-step directions in our how-to, Saving Tomato Seed.

Getting the green beans out will allow me to prepare part of our main raised garden bed for some fall, succession crops. I need to get our fall carrots seeded soon. Fall lettuce and spinach will also go into the area once it's renovated.

Charity: Water

Saturday, July 18, 2020

Hot conditionsOur current compost pileToday's main gardening job was to, well, not fall over in the heat. But my gardening goal was to remove the old grass clipping mulch from a good bit of our main raised bed. With temperatures in the nineties and the heat index above a hundred, I spread the work over a good bit of the day. The mulch removed went onto our compost pile. To help get the decomposition going, I gave the pile a good sprinkle of compost starter, a mix of ammonia (for nitrogen), Coke (for sugars necessary for decomposition), and dish detergent (as a spreader sticker).

Since pulling our broccoli and cauliflower plants, other than the broccoli that is now bearing seed pods, I'd let some grass weeds that broke through the mulch get pretty well established. This part of our main bed got away from me the last two years, and I've been determined not to let weeds take over the area again.

Main raised bed with mulch and weeds

I intended to take a garden rake, hoe, and a scuffle hoe with me to clean up the area. My standard garden hoe wasn't on the back porch, so I proceeded with the other two implements. It turned out that the soil conditions today were perfect for using a scuffle hoe. I cut the grass weeds off at their base, other than one huge weed that came up with a soccer ball sized rootball!

After a lot of raking a scuffling, the bed is ready to be rototilled and fall planted.

Main bed cleaned up

Celery and onion plantsJapanese Long Pickling cucumbers doing wellAs some of our onion plants are still actively growing, I decided to leave them and two lonely celery plants alone and not rake or till that area of our main raised bed. That entailed changing my fall gardening plan a bit, but that wasn't a big problem.

Looking around our raised garden beds, I was pleased to see that we have a few things going right despite our current dry spell. Our Japanese Long Pickling cucumber plants are growing well. Sadly, all of the snapdragon plants transplanted the same day around the cucumbers succumbed to dry conditions or cutworms.

Elsewhere in our raised beds, our new planting of peas and kale are doing okay. The pea plants are surviving our current, hot conditions with daily watering. Keeping the direct seeded kale rows watered is a priority, as kale doesn't really like hot conditions.

Our Earlirouge tomato plants are bearing fruit now. We had a lot of blossom end rot from them early on, probably caused by the dry conditions that prevented the plants from uptaking the calcium we'd put in the soil (lime/ground egg shells).

Pea and kale bed Tomatoes ripening Our first yellow squash of the season

I also picked several yellow squash today. Like everything else, the squash and squash plants are showing the effects of the dry spell.

Burpee Gardening Supplies & Gifts

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Our Senior Garden - July 19, 2020Weather Underground Extended ForecastWe have another hot, dry day here today, but that may soon change. An updated extended weather forecast calls for heavy thunderstorms this afternoon and/or this evening.

Almost unbelievable is the forecast showing a chance of rain every day for the ten day period! Of course, weather forecasts can and do change by the hour. But we may be seeing the end of our current drought.

Farming through the Drought of 1983, droughts are something that really scare me. In 1983, I watched as our fields of corn shriveled, producing two to three foot tall stalks that bore no ears.

My most important gardening job for today was tilling the part of our main raised garden bed that I recently cleared crops from. The dry ground didn't till up all that well and could use another pass with the tiller. With heavy rain predicted, I may have to go with just the one tilling.

Part of main raised bed tilled and raked

Kale and pea bedKale emergingThe bed will be direct seeded with carrots, beets, and spinach. A bit later, it will get some lettuce and possibly cabbage transplants.

With the dry spell, watering has become a daily chore. Our newly transplanted peas are doing so-so in the dry weather. Some of the kale I seeded on Thursday has emerged already! I usually have a tough time getting kale seed to germinate in hot, dry conditions. Of course, the seed that has emerged is some of our freshest seed purchased in the last year or two. I'm holding my breath on the older seed coming up.

While out in our East Garden yesterday, I discovered a softball sized Sugar Cube cantaloupe. In a week or two, we may begin feasting on melons. My hopes for a clean field of melons are now a thing of the past. I simply can't mulch fast enough to keep the melon areas of our East Garden weed free. So we'll get some melons amongst the weeds, although the melon plants are currently producing a good canopy of leaves that impede weed germination and growth.

Wear the Mask

It's become pretty obvious that our federal government and President aren't going to do much to protect us from the coronavirus. As citizens of this nation, what we can do is to wear face masks in public and social distance. It's a miserable state of affairs when one has to abstain from hugging children and grandchildren. And as a retired teacher, the President's push to open schools this fall seems to be his wish for re-opening at the cost of our grandchildrens' lives. Please consider his abhorrent actions as we approach a Presidential election this fall.

Charity: Water

Monday, July 20, 2020 - Fall Carrots Seeded

Carrot rows strung and shallow furrows madeWalking boards laid over planted rowsWe had some strong thunderstorms overnight. Several rumbles of thunder shook our sturdy, old house! But with them came a very welcome 1.38 inches of rain.

The rain made our recently tilled soil heavy and difficult to work until I drug a rake across it. I also spread grass clipping mulch out from our row of broccoli for seed to about the edge of the carrot area. I laid my walking boards over the mulch so that the mulch and boards would keep me out of the mud and also lessen any soil compaction I was creating.

I used a short piece of one inch scrap lumber to make shallow furrows down the string lines, keeping the furrow around a half inch deep. I tried to be careful spacing the carrot seed, buy my fingers got sticky with mud, so there will be clumps of carrots to be thinned. After lightly covering the seed with soil and tamping it down with my hand, I covered the planted rows with my walking boards. They'll help retain moisture in the soil and also slow weed growth under them, as carrot seed can take more than a week to germinate.

I seeded Bolero, Laguna, Mokumicon, Naval, Napoli, and Scarlet Nantes down the row in alphabetical order to help me remember what went where until I could write it down. I like to plant several varieties in case one or more fail. The harvest usually has some nice variety to it with some long, thin carrots and also some fat, short ones. The Bolero, Naval, and Napoli varieties are highly recommended for fall planting and winter storage.

See How We Grow Our Carrots for complete planting, harvesting, and storage info for carrots.

I'd hoped to direct seed rows of beets and spinach today, but hot, humid conditions drove me back inside just after noon. So I cleaned up, ran to Walmart (where everyone was blessedly masked), and brought in a fresh onion and garlic to make some homemade refried kidney beans. Annie is making tacos or burritos for supper tonight.

Later

I went back outside around eight o'clock and seeded rows of beets (Bull's Bloodicon, Merlinicon, and Pacemaker III) and spinach (Abundant Bloomsdale and America).

Wal-Mart.com USA, LLC

Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - Trimming and Storing Garlic

Garlic hanging in basementRegular and elephant garlic size comparisonI trimmed the leaves and roots off our garlic today. The garlic had been drying and curing on a table in our garage for a little over two weeks. We ended up getting a bit over thirteen pounds of garlic with very few split wrappers that makes the garlics poor candidates for long term storage. Unless we have a vampire problem, we'll give away a good bit of this harvest. But there will be plenty for planting this fall and for cooking all winter.

The photo at right is a size comparison of average regular garlic and elephant garlic. I took the photo to use in our Growing Garlic how-to, as the size comparison shot I'd used there had no frame of reference for the size: thus, the mini-ruler.

We store our garlic in our basement plant room. Storage conditions there aren't ideal, but we always have good garlic until the next crop comes in. Note that the braid of garlic shown is from last year. I just didn't have the heart to pitch it.

Disappointing Peppers

My first gardening job of the day was trimming all the red peppers off of our Earliest Red Sweet plants. Every red pepper had blossom end rot. Even though I'd put down a good bit of lime and ground egg shell to provide the plants calcium to prevent the rot, dry conditions apparently prevented adequate uptake of the necessary mineral. Peppers set on the plants since we've gotten rain look to be okay.

BTW: If you purchased Earliest Red Sweet and/or Earlirouge seed from us this year and are dissatisfied with it, email me for a full refund.

Earlirouge tomato rowBaken Parmesan Yellow SquashLikewise, we've had a lot of blossom end rot in our Earlirouge tomatoes. It's cleared up considerably since I began seriously watering the plants before our current rainy spell started. I do fear the dry spell may have stunted the plants. They're far shorter than usual at this time of the season.

Excellent Yellow Squash Recipe

On a far happier note, I did a search for yellow squash recipes and found a dandy in Samantha Skaggs's Baked Parmesan Yellow Squash Recipe on the Five Heart Home site. The recipe is really quick and easy, and possibly only calls for items you already have on hand. (I didn't know we had grated Parmesan in the freezer, but my darling wife did!) The recipe is a variant of a zucchini recipe, so it should work with that vegetable as well. The results were delicious.

David's Cookies

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Another inch and a half of rain fell here overnight. Instead of working outside (playing in the mud), I decided to get some things started inside.

I seeded some fall lettuce: Jericho; Coastal Star; Crispino; Sun Devil; and Barbados. I'll probably seed some more in a week or so.

I haven't grown any good cabbage in a few years, so I started some Super Red 80, Alcosa, and Tendersweet.

Last of all, I started two 4 1/2 inch pots of Slick Pik yellow squash. While Slick Pik plants are very productive of thin yellow squash, the plants seem to wear themselves out pretty quickly, making succession plantings necessary. They're also very attractive to squash bugs, one of the few pests that causes me to break out liquid Sevinicon to control them.

I looked out our kitchen window around noon and saw a half dozen hummingbirds swarming around our big 32 oz. feeder. I'd just filled the feeder a day or so ago. Both of our other feeders, 10 and 16 oz., were also empty. That told me that the second clutch of hummingbirds hatched out this summer had left the nest. I'll stay busy refilling the feeders until the interesting birds begin their migration south next month.

I didn't take any garden shots today, but did capture a colorful evening sky over our raised beds.

Evening sky over Senior Garden - July 22, 2020

A2 Web Hosting

Friday, July 24, 2020

Our Senior Garden - July 24, 2020Fruit BouquetsIt's been a day or so of breaking things. When mowing this afternoon, I broke a belt on the mower deck that I can't replace myself. Our John Deere dealership won't pick up the mower until next week. How's that for prompt on farm service! And that's the less worse news.

My 2010 Mac Mini had been overheating and shutting down for a week or so. I'd opened it up and sprayed it with canned air to clear out dust, but that didn't help. So last night, fortified by a couple of glasses of scotch, I tore down the machine trying to find the problem.

I'm not a rookie with these things, as I've partially torn down this model in the past. (This is my second 2010 Mac Mini. The first one died of, what else, overheating.) But I'd not previously pulled the motherboard on one of these things.

Torn down 2010 Mac Mini

Sadly, I didn't find the dust or dust bunnies covering the heat sink that I'd hoped to blow away. So I'm not sure if there is a problem with the motherboard, the computer chip, or the hybrid hard drive.

Fortunately, I'd gone on eBay and purchased another 2010 Mac Mini before beginning the teardown. It's surprising how many of these old machines are still around and for sale. I like this model, as it's the last Mac Mini that will run Apple's Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.8) operating system. I have several applications that run well under Snow Leopard that I'd have to update and/or repurchase to run under Apple's later operating systems. Installing my RAM chips and hard drive on the incoming machine will be fairly easy.

I finally got my slightly newer MacBook Pro to drive my 23" monitor tonight.

So, I don't know how much garden writing I'll be doing in the next few days. Other than breaking my mower, my only outdoor activity today was scraping a few weeds in our main raised bed with a scuffle hoe. The soil was still too wet for the hoeing to be effective. And after our recent rains, grass weeds are erupting throughout our garden plots.

1800Flowers

Saturday, July 25, 2020 - Weeding

My first gardening job today was to take care of the grass weeds that had sprouted in our main raised garden bed since our recent rains. I'd scuffle hoed a bit yesterday, but found the ground was too wet for that to be effective.

Weedy bed before today's scuffling A few hours after scuffling

Since the carrots, beets, and spinach seeded weren't up yet, I strung my rows again and scuffle hoed as close as I dared to the planted rows. While it didn't look like I was doing much good as I hoed, a few hours later, I could see that I'd killed most of the seedling weeds. I'll probably have to go over the area again tomorrow with the scuffle hoe to clean up weeds that survived today's weeding. And I'll have a mess of in row weeds to pick out once the crops emerge.

Onions

I pulled the last of our onions and moved them to the curing table in our garage. The onions pulled easily, which told me they were no longer drawing moisture and nutrition from the ground.

Left side of drying/curing table full of onions Right side of drying/curing table with onions

Most sources I've read say that storage onions need to cure in a warm, dark area for four to six weeks before being stored for winter use. When cured, one twists or cuts off the leaves. I bag our onions in old mesh potato bags and hang the bags in our plant room for storage.

Broccoli for Seed

I tried growing broccoli for seed last season for the first time, but didn't get any seed from our plants. I didn't give the plants enough time to mature seed and didn't have multiple plants blooming at once for the necessary cross-pollination. I found that broccoli doesn't self-pollinate. We did get some lovely blooms last year.

Goliath broccoli head blooming, going to seed

This year, I planted a row of seven Goliath broccoli plants just for seed. It was tough not harvesting the beautiful large heads of mature broccoli, but several of the plants have now matured seed pods. I cut the stalks with seed pods on them today, placing them in a large, paper grocery bag to dry.

Broccoli seed pods Broccoli, pods down, in paper bag Broccoli bagged, ready for storage/drying in basement

The idea of bagging plants for seed is that the seed pods will rupture and leave seed at the bottom of the bag. My experience with other plant types has been that I have to manually split some of the pods to release the seed. But this is my first time with saving broccoli seed, so we'll see what happens.

Sweet Corn Tasseling

Sweet corn tassellingRampant melon vine growthI didn't work in our East Garden plot today, but did drive around it before going into town. I noticed that some of our sweet corn had begun tasselling. While that's a good sign for the corn's development, it also is a warning, as deer love sweet corn tassels. So this evening at about nine o'clock, I was out spraying our sweet corn with our homebrew of Not Tonight, Deer! I also cut up a bar of Irish Spring bar soap around the corn to fend off deer. While both products do seem to deter deer, they have little effect on raccoons. Tasselling to corn-on-the-cob takes about three weeks, if you can keep the deer and raccoons at bay.

Near our sweet corn, our rows of melon vines have gotten away from me. I usually try to mulch with grass clippings before the vines grow over them. But this year, rains produced rampant vine growth beyond what I could mulch ahead of. Fortunately, the vines will canopy and prevent a lot of weed growth under them. We should still get some nice melons out of the planting.

Gloxinias

We still have gloxinias under our plant lights approaching their blooming stage. I brought another plant upstairs this morning with lovely purple and white edged blooms. It joined our table full of other gloxinias in our dining room.

Purple and white gloxinia blooms

I've been hand pollinating the purple and white gloxinias this month. Later, I'll hand pollinate the other colors, but I wanted to see if the purple and whites were dominant.

Gloxinias on dining room table

My lovely wife allows me to take over our dining room table each summer with our collection of gloxinias in bloom.

Habitat for Humanity

Monday, July 27, 2020

Weedy melon rowsWatermelons ripeningWell, our East Garden plot has now gotten away from me. With some recent rains and me not getting a lot of mulching done, the aisles between our melon rows are filled with grass weeds. Fortunately, melons can withstand some weed pressure, especially since the hills where they were started were mulched. Walking the rows, I found lots of cantaloupe and watermelon ripening, and even one honeydew..

Our four rows of sweet corn are facing a lot less weed pressure. I'd made a pass through it with our walking tiller turning in some fertilizer. While there are weeds in the rows, the corn has now canopied, denying light to the grass in the rows.

Sweet corn rows

Required FTC Disclosure Statement

Some of our text links go to the sites of our Senior Gardening Advertisers. Clicking through one of our banner ads or text links and making a purchase will produce a small commission for us from the sale.

So far, our sprays of homemade Not Tonight, Deer and chips of Irish Spring bar soap spread on the ground have deterred any more deer damage. Once the corn tassels and sets ears, the deer may become more aggressive. Raccoons will also be a problem, as this year's corn is closer to the woods than in previous years. With raccoons, we just try to grow enough for both them and us. I'm still resisting going to a hot wire to keep the raccoons and deer out of our East Garden. Maybe someday.

Hill of Slick Pik yellow squashSlick Pik yellow squash on the plantOur three hills of Slick Pik yellow squash are now producing far more squash than we can eat. The surplus so far has gone to our local food bank and my wife's co-workers.

The plant shown at left was direct seeded several days after I transplanted two hills of the squash. The direct seeded plants began producing just a few days after the transplants! And the direct seeded hill seems much healthier than the transplants. Hmm!

Even so, I have two pots of yellow squash germinating under our plant lights in the basement. When our current plants wear out, I'll put the new plants in our main raised bed. And while the squash have been a little slow to germinate in the basement, all of the lettuce and most of the cabbage I started on Wednesday have come up. Wanting to get these plants in the ground as soon as possible, I moved them to a protected area of our back porch this afternoon.

Cabbage and lettuce germinated

While out this morning (I was done gardening by noon.), I pulled all but one of our Goliath broccoli plants for seed. The one remaining plant is still ripening some apparently viable seed pods. I also noticed a white cabbage moth fluttering about, so I filled my organics sprayer with Thuricide and sprayed the remaining plant and our seedling kale. I refilled the sprayer with Serenade biofungicide and sprayed our languishing Earlirouge tomato plants. I'm not sure what is wrong with the plants, other than they got stunted during our dry spell, but thought a spray of fungicide couldn't hurt. Of course, it began raining a few minutes ago, washing off much of the sprays, so I'll need to repeat them tomorrow.

I may be offline a day or two starting tomorrow. A replacement 2010 Mac Mini is supposed to be delivered, and I'll be testing it before moving my main hard drive and RAM chips into it. And to top it off, I found a new 2018 model on eBay that I'm watching that may move me closer to the world of modern computing!

For now, my 2011 MacBook Pro is handling all of my computing chores.

Free Shipping on Orders over $35

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Our Senior Garden - July 29, 20201-800-Flowers Deal of the WeekI'm still living in computer purgatory, but have high hopes that it will all be resolved in a week or so. I'm thankful I had everything backed up from my main computer on an external drive. It turns out that my old Mac Mini died from a broken wire to a heat sensor that led to my hard drive failing. I probably broke the wire when I opened up the Mini to blow dust out of it (after it had been overheating).

Gardening today was limited to picking a few yellow squash and looking for ripe cantaloupe. I didn't find any Sugar Cube melons ready to pick, usually our first to ripen.

We again had Samantha Skaggs's Baked Parmesan Yellow Squash with our lunch. I varied the recipe a bit by adding seasoned salt and some ground asiago to go with the recommended ground Parmesan topping. The squash were delicious.

I checked our rows of carrots, beets, and spinach planted over a week ago. Other than an odd carrot seedling here and there, nothing came up! I'll wait until the ground dries out, rototill, and plant again. But it's going to be close to a first frost if we can get the seed to germinate, as we're running out of gardening days for this season.

Charity: Water

Friday, July 31, 2020 - July Wrap-up

July, 2020, animated GIF of our Senior GardenTwo and a half inches of rain on July 30, 2020If nothing else, it has been an interesting month. We started July in drought conditions. That's actually fairly typical rainfall for after the Fourth of July in this area. Now we find that we're getting a bit of rain every few days. It rained almost all day yesterday, producing almost three inches of rainfall! In normal years, our ground is bone dry at this time.

But normal has been out the window much of this year. We're staying home and social distancing, trying to stay healthy amidst the coronavirus pandemic. Civil unrest has spread across the nation, and we have an idiot President doing his best to inflame racial divisions and let the virus go unchecked. (And normally, I keep my political opinions to myself on these pages.)

Sweet corn nipped by deer
Sweet corn rows

Our gardening month began with some deer damage to our newly emerged sweet corn. That may have been a good thing, as it got me spraying the corn with our homebrew of Not Tonight, Deer and spreading chips of Irish Spring bar soap around the corn planting. Our corn is tasselling now, but spraying is not effective with the rain we're having.

I transplanted our Japanese Long Pickling cucumbers between our double trellis on the Fourth of July. The plants took off, but appear to be experiencing a bit of downy mildew now. I've sprayed them with Serenade biofungicide. If that doesn't prove effective, I'll move on to the non-organic, but effective Fungonil fungicide.

Makeshift drying/curing tableWe had another good year with garlic. I dug, cured, and stored about thirteen pounds of it this month.

Our green bean varieties matured sort of staggered this year, preventing one or two big pickings and cannings. We still put up enough beans to last us through the winter, but it took three tries at the canning.

Even before I cleared our makeshift drying/curing table of garlic, I had to make room for some early onions. Fortunately, I got the garlic bagged and stored before filling the table with some of the best onions we've ever grown.

In keeping with a non-normal July, I filed our taxes a day or two before the fifteenth. Even though it was legal, it still felt funny waiting so long to do the filing.

I transplanted some short fall peas and direct seeded kale mid-month. The jury is still out on whether the pea transplants will make it, but the kale looks pretty good.

Pretty yellow squashWe started getting nice yellow squash mid-month. With three hills of them, we were nearly overrun with yellow squash after our dry spell ended. The Slick Pik variety we grow tends to produce heavily and then crash. We haven't seen the crash as yet, but I have two replacement pots of Slick Piks started in the basement, just in case.

Carrots in garden cartI dug our spring carrots mid-month. Despite digging them a couple of weeks past their days-to-maturity dates, the carrots were rather small. That's not altogether a bad thing, as young, slender carrots are really tasty.

Days after the digging, I started our fall carrots, some beets, and fall spinach. When I checked the rows last evening, all I found was one beet plant amongst the weeds that had sprung up in the rows. Once our soil dries out, I'll rototill again and re-plant, hoping for a late fall.

Watermelons ripeningAfter two years of trying, I finally was able to produce some viable Goliath broccoli seed. Most sources recommend overwintering fall plants for seed production. Since I'm not much good at overwintering stuff, I started the broccoli early and was rewarded with lots of mature seed pods late this month.

While I let our melon rows get weedy, we have lots of cantaloupe, honeydew, and watermelon maturing. Our hills of butternuts and pumpkins are also doing well.

I've bemoaned our computer ills enough this month. It will probably take until the middle of next month before I get everything restored and working properly.

Ending on a high note, we've enjoyed fabulous gloxinia blooms so far this summer. I fell in love with growing gloxinias over forty years ago. Just growing them morphed into breeding them about twenty years ago. It wasn't on purpose, but I was teaching science classes whose curriculum included plant pollination. So I encouraged my students to begin hand pollinating our classroom gloxinias with Q-tips.

Purple and white gloxinia blooms White gloxinia
Double gloxinia blooms Red gloxinia bloom

A2 Web Hosting

Previous month
June, 2020

Next Month
August, 2020

Contact Steve Wood, the at Senior Gardening

 

Affiliated Advertisers

©2020 Senior-Gardening.com