The Old Guy's Garden Record

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Tuesday, July 1, 2025

After a very hot and wet June, we started July with a half inch of rain overnight. With our frequent, recent rains, everything is way too wet to work outside.

Our extended weather forecast from the Weather Underground suggests things may dry out enough to do some serious gardening in the next week or so.

I did take out several buckets of compost today. One was kitchen compost (mostly pea pods and coffee grounds) and another was filled with gloxinias that had failed to break dormancy. A third was partially filled with garlic scones I'd trimmed off our garlics when putting them on our drying/curing table in the garage.

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Friday, July 4, 2025 - Independence Day

Here's wishing you a safe and happy holiday weekend.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

We started today with, what else, more rain. I do hope to get outside later and do a little gardening.

Some of our gloxinias have finally come into bloom. Most of the bloomers are double blooms, which makes hand pollinating the flowers for seed saving a bit difficult.

Besides the gloxinias on our dining room table, I have ten very healthy gloxinias on a bookshelf inside our sunroom. The plants weren't doing well under our plant lights in the basement, so I moved them to the sunroom.

I wondered if the heat in the sunroom would hurt the plants. But despite some high temperatures above 100°F, the plants are thriving!

Besides the frequent rains and very high temperatures, an old neck injury has pretty much brought my outdoor gardening to a halt. I did try a little weeding yesterday of the bed our tall peas were in. I need to clear that bed to plant cucumbers in it. I also want to till the bed our garlic grew in to make way for a planting of supersweet Eclipse peas.

And while most of our main raised bed is covered with grass weeds and our East Garden plot is still untilled, I've decided to just go with what I can do and be happy with that.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

I'm just gearing up for the day. But I took the time this morning to write both of our Indiana senators suggesting that they not support rescinding funding for public broadcasting.

I hope you'll similarly contact your senators: U.S. Senate website.

Friday, July 11, 2025

The image at left is of a granddaughter who turns twenty on Sunday. She loved tomatoes, starting with grape tomatoes before moving on to our favorite Moira tomatoes. She also loves Grandma's Yeast Rolls. So I made a batch of rolls for her for a family gathering.

I used the overnight refrigerator method for the dough, causing it not to raise as much as I would have liked. But as usual, the rolls were delicious.

Speaking of delicious, a bunch of squirrels have found the birdseed we spread around our shallow well cover to their liking. One bold squirrel remained on the cover while I took today's splashshot of our garden. Sometimes, four or five squirrels hit the bird seed.

It's getting too late to plant sweet corn this year, but I hope to get some Eclipse peas, JLP cucumbers, carrots, and lima beans planted. If I ever get our East Garden plot turned over, it will go to a cover crop of buckwheat.

Sunday, July 13, 2025

I tried to mow our lawn yesterday. I went out early in the afternoon about two hours before a rain was predicted to arrive. After about ten minutes, I came in totally soaked with sweat and rainwater. But after cleaning up the mower, I was able to mow our lawn today, leaving the field next to us for tomorrow.

While on the riding mower, I was able to knock down some of the weeds growing in our main garden bed. Getting the lawn tractor into the raised bed takes a trick or two, but I got it done.

And has been the history of this season, we got another heavy rain again this evening.

Friday, July 18, 2025

I had a choice this morning to either go to town (for some fried chicken, onion rings, and popcorn shrimp), or to begin cleaning our garlic for storage. I chose poorly. Although the fried foods were delicious, the heat in the garage drove me back inside to the air conditioning with the job only half done.

Processing the garlic involves sorting types of garlic (softneck, hardneck, elephant, and culls). I trim off the garlic roots to about a quarter inch and rub off any soil still adhering to the garlic bulbs. Other than some softnecks reserved for braiding, the garlic stems get trimmed off a couple of inches or so above the bulb.

Our how-to: Growing Garlic.

With the rainy weather and my poor health, not much gardening is getting done these days. I have worked through mowing our lawn and the field next to us. The field was still wet when I started mowing, but I really didn't care if I left wheel marks from the mowing. And since I'd let the field get too high, I had to mow with the mower deck set at its highest setting.

We've had a succession of meals from some on sale sirloin tip roasts. They first made a couple of suppers of beef manhattans. Then I moved on to making some beef pot pie. I made a few mistakes with that one. I forgot to add peas to the potatoes and carrots for the pie. I also let my purchased pie crusts get too warm. They wanted to tear when I unrolled them. And finally, I didn't get enough beef broth/gravy in the pie.

But it was still good.

Saturday, July 19, 2025

I got out to the garage fairly early today to finish processing our garlic. We got a nice harvest, but smaller than a lot of years. But there’s enough to supply our needs, share some, and plant more garlic this fall.

One weird outcome was that most of the Chesnock Red garlics dwarfed. They're a longer season garlic, but some Chesnocks ripened to normal size.

After processing the garlic and moving the roots and stems to our new garlic pile, I considered pulling the T-posts where our early peas had grown. I usually grow tall cucumbers after the peas come out, but saw this morning that we have lots of relish and pickles left from last year. I'll probably use the bed for fall carrots.

With thunderstorms rolling in, I decided against pulling the T-posts which could serve as lightning rods! Instead, I sorted out garlics for making garlic powder.

Our how-to: Growing Garlic.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

I dumped two inches of rain out of our rain gauge this morning. And as I write this evening, another thunderstorm is rolling in.

Between all too frequent rains, high daily temperatures, and some lack of desire on my part, most of our garden plots are unplanted. I've given up hope on our large East Garden plot where we often grow sweet corn and melons. Besides some onions and some very healthy tomato plants, our main raised bed is covered with weeds.

My main hope for planting now lies with our two narrow raised beds. I want to plant one to carrots and some other stuff and the other to Eclipse peas.

Our current extended weather outlook isn't all that favorable. We have rain tonight, of course, but some really high afternoon temperatures predicted.

Note: This posting didn't go up until Monday morning. As I finished writing Sunday evening, storms came in and we lost our internet connection. The storm also took out our satellite for a time with rain fade.

Monday, July 21, 2025

We received nearly two more inches of rain overnight. The storm's thunder violently shook our house and had all of our pets hiding or trying to find cover. We lost our internet connection overnight, something that happens all too often in heavy rains. And as I previously mentioned, we had rain fade interfering with our satellite TV reception.

And we have more storms rolling in. I had to seriously lighten today's splashshot in Photoshop for it to be usable. It's just that dark out this morning.

Interestingly, we didn't lose any more trees to the strong storm. I think previous storms had downed all of our weak trees. We currently have parts or all of six trees down on the three acre property we care for. Our lot is just 1.3 acres. But by caring for the extended property, we have space for our East Garden plot in the field east of us and a thirty plus year old asparagus patch in the ground beyond the back of our lot.

The trees down are more than an old geezer can handle. I'll have to have the tree guys come in to clean up the mess.

Friday, July 25, 2025

Well, at least it's not raining every day now. But the intense heat is keeping me inside with other chores.

I try to hand pollinate some of our gloxinia blooms almost every day. But in the mornings when the sun is bright in our dining room windows, our cats want to sunbathe on the dining room table. At left, Lars didn't want to move to allow access to the plants. When the sun moved off the windows, Lars gave up and I used a Q-tip to pollinate several blooms.

When a bloom is pollinated and maturing seed, it often (but not always) looks like the one pictured at right. The flower will eventually drop off. Even then, the seed usually isn't quite mature. But in a week or so, the bud will dry and release tiny black gloxinia seed when crushed between ones fingers.

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Some TV and online ads recently showed spaghetti and meatballs. It gave me a craving, so I bought a package of frozen Armour beef meatballs. They were terrible. When cooked, they shrunk to the size of a large marble and were very hard. (Maybe I overcooked them.)

So I then began searching online for beef meatball recipes. There were several good ones, but I mostly followed one from the real food Dietitians. I didn't get the breadcrumbs mixed well and wasn't satisfied with the flavor of the meatballs once done. I considered using the rest of them as dog treats. But the next day, I let some of them warm for several hours in the oven (250°F) with some Hunt's Traditional Pasta Sauce.

Hooray for the sauce, as it made the meatballs delicious. And I have enough left for another supper of it tonight.

Saturday, July 26, 2025

The gloxinia bloom I showed here yesterday dropped its bloom today. The seed pod is still maturing, so I'll leave it alone until the bloom stalk begins to deteriorate.

I also forgot that I had a feature I wrote in 2009 on Saving Gloxinia Seed.

Sunday, July 27, 2025

Another blisteringly hot day today. Knowing I wasn’t going to attempt any outside gardening today, I started on another chore.Working in the morning shade, I began dumping transplants that will never go into the ground from our basement and under our cold frame. Looking at the calendar, we probably have only 75 growing days before our first frost date. Adding 7-14 days to plants' days-to-maturity figures to allow for shorter day length says no to the transplants. I may be able to sneak in some short season carrots and a bit of kale. The dumped transplants went out to our new compost pile.

I added some compost starter to the pile. The recipe for it is a cup of household ammonia, a 12 ounce Coke or Pepsi (regular, not diet), and a quarter cup of dish detergent to act as a surfactant. The late garden author Jerry Baker recommended using a hose end applicator at a 15:1 water-concentrate ratio, but I just poured a bit of the concentrate in a 2 gallon plastic watering can that I reserve for this task.

Cleaning out the cold frame gave me another job…for another day. I now have quite a pile of used, dirty trays, inserts, pots, and hanging basket pots that need to be washed. I also have a PVC cold frame I need to strip the plastic off of and store the frame for winter.

The area around our cold frame and generally around our back porch had gotten overgrown with weeds. That requires a job I don’t much like. It will get sprayed with Roundup herbicide.

We finally have a single tomato showing some red coloring.

Thursday, July 31, 2025 - July Wrap-up

There's just not much to write about July, and for that matter, the whole 2025 gardening season. Rain, heat, some physical problems, and some just plain laziness on my part has doomed our garden areas to weeds. Other than cleaning up some garlic and a few peas for planting, I didn't harvest anything this month!

It was still misting outside this morning when I went out to empty our rain gauge (another half inch) and check our tomato plants. We have several tomatoes showing some red coloring, but none of them are ripe yet.

The frequent rains and high temperatures have mostly kept me inside avoiding the extreme heat. I did clear our cold frame of plants, pulled the plastic off the PVC frame, and stored the thing for the winter. I also mixed a gallon of Roundup herbicide to knock down the weeds that were taking over our back porch area.

Contact Steve Wood, the at Senior Gardening