June Garden Recap

Hard to believe that half the year is gone already! I'm going to recap what's going on in my garden as we finish the month.

Quick update on my hydrangea woes....My internet searching has led me to believe there are multiple problems with my poor Endless Summer: root rot, powdery mildew, and probably some other type of fungus. I haven't had time to address this after work in the evenings, so I'm putting this project off until the weekend.

Now for the good news:

The tomatillos are looking great! I don't want to jinx anything, but all four plants are blooming, I've seen three different kinds of bees buzzing around them pollinating the blooms, and a couple of the plants have fruited. I hope to see continued progress here.

The Black Krim tomato plants have blossoms and are slowly producing fruit. Right now they're very small.

We planted five bush bean seeds and ALL of them germinated this week. I love when that happens!

This year we're growing a new kind of hot pepper--cayenne. The peppers have formed. They look like green beans and are sort of camouflaged. That's all for now. I'm looking forward to a long, relaxing holiday weekend.

Garden Odds and Ends (and Kittens!)

Something weird is going on with my Endless Summer hydrangea plant.

The middle blooms just started drooping and turning brown. So far the online research I've done points to a possible fungus. There are spots on some leaves, but not all of them. I'll do a little more research, but in the meantime, has anyone else seen this? Any advice?

In more positive news, we found a volunteer tomato plant out amongst the weeds beyond our property line. Sometimes we toss half-eaten or rotten tomatoes and squash over the fence and into the weeds and trees where the squirrels, wild rabbits, and birds pick at them. (Side note: If the critters bother to come to the deck to eat my veggies, I wish they would just finish them here). My husband was walking around the common areas of our development over the weekend and noticed this tomato plant. We think it came from the seeds of a tomato we tossed over last summer. He dug it up and put it in a pot; it even has a tomato growing on it! We're not sure what kind of tomato it is, and it doesn't look too good now, but I hope it survives. It's a bonus tomato plant!

3 of the 5 foster kittens

Lastly--posting may be infrequent over the next four weeks. I volunteer at our local animal shelter and we're fostering five adorable stray kittens--three boys and two girls. They're underweight but gaining steadily and super playful, cute, and time consuming. We need to get their weight up and get them used to household noises and being handled by humans before we return them to the shelter so they can go up for adoption. Our resident cat is curious and friendly (and trying to be nonchalant about being so curious). It's going to be extremely difficult to send them back. They're cuter than baby tomatoes!

Weekend in the Garden: Weeding & Watering

And squishing bugs.

black krim blossoms

It's hard to walk around our deck these days! We wove our way around the pots looking for any possible ripe fruit. We did pick a small handful of ripe strawberries, two grape tomatoes, and four early girl tomatoes. Not much, but it's nice to have something to pick!

Although all the pots have mulch, weeds still manage to make their way in, and I find myself pulling grass blades and other weeds every at least every other day. We spend time each evening watering all the plants, as container plants typically need more water than those in the ground because most of the water escapes through the bottom of the container. I spotted three different kinds of bumbles buzzing around the blossoms over the weekend, so I hope they pollinated the plants and we get some fruit soon.

Speaking of insects, we also saw quite a bit of aphids, which we squished without a second thought. Actually my husband squished them. I just say, "Hey, what's this thing over here?" and he identifies it and tells me whether it's good or bad for the plants. Having an entomologist in the house is very convenient. We spotted a baby stink bug in the strawberry bed and got rid of it too. Fortunately, we spotted several beneficial insects on the plants as well, including lacewings (whose larvae eat aphids and spider mites) and pirate bugs.

In non-bug news, the cilantro is actually growing! It took its sweet time to appear, but here it is. We're growing it from seed again this year, but we have it in a container this summer instead of in the ground. We planted it in the ground last year, and it just didn't seem to grow well, maybe because it didn't get enough sun because of the tomato plants around it that cast some shade? Or possibly from the intense heat last summer. 

In our small ground plot we have cucumber and luffa growing (and broccoli, but not in this picture). So far so good with these. The luffa won't really take off until late summer/early fall when the temperatures cool off a little.

mammoth sunflower plants

And finally, an update on the sunflowers. We've had some problems with these flowers this year. The squirrels got to the mammoth sunflower transplants AGAIN while we were out of town last weekend. It is so frustrating! Luckily, we had some mammoth sunflower seedlings sitting in growing cells that we didn't know what to do with. Once we came home and realized that squirrels had snipped the plants out, we moved the other seedlings into the pot and brought the pot closer to the door. I hope keeping the pots closer to the door deters the squirrels from attacking these things. (The mesh netting snapped off so that didn't help).

coconut ice and Chianti plants

Finally, the coconut ice hybrid (front) and Chianti hybrid (square pot) are doing OK. I planted four seeds in each pot, but only two seeds germinated in each. These are also close to the door, which I hope deters the squirrels from attacking them. That's it for now. 

Oh, we did eat the strawberries. The small ones were a little tart but the slightly bigger ones were pretty sweet!