Nearly August Already?

 

You Can't Beat Beets

Monday it will be August already, and we can tell that, in the event of societal collapse, we would starve pretty quickly.

Some things are going well this year, many are not.

Wildlife is a lot of fun out in the yard. There's a baby bunny that plays with a squirrel almost nightly on the back patio. There's a family of robins (3 chicks in all) ensconced on the light outside our garage.

I think that I missed my calling as a wildlife photographer. My kid says, "No, you didn't. Your pictures are terrible." And they're not wrong.

Unfortunately, I think that the cute rabbits denuded our blueberry bushes.

Speaking of blueberry bushes, the three older ones along the side of the garage - we got them our first season here - are producing nothing. They just do not seem to be thriving. 

Similarly, this year we decided to try a new variety of pickling cucumber. We interplanted it with the peas to try to take advantage of two crops out of one bed. It has not been a resounding success. Perhaps now that we've pulled the peas (which were past their season), the cucumbers will start to thrive. But they're some pretty sad little plants. So far they've only produced a few weird mutant round cucumbers. I'd hoped we'd have enough to can. Not gonna happen.

We have 11 zucchini plants. They're blurping out about two decent sized zucchinis a week. That seems appallingly slow for having so many plants.

The tomatoes are a true disappointment so far. We haven't had a single decent one ripen out of four varieties in 3.5 beds. We have had some serious blossom end rot on a handful of them. In fairness, it looks like we might get a couple of ripe ones tomorrow. But they are late. 

On the other hand, the sunflowers have gone berserk. Many of them grew nearly a foot in a single week.

What's going to be interesting here is what happens with the pumpkins that are planted in the same beds. These are seriously aggressive pumpkins, and they've wound themselves around the sunflowers and stakes. Some are crawling up onto the deck. We shall see.

So what are we doing wrong? Our neighbors garden seems to be doing markedly better. 

There are a number of factors - some out of our control, that I think are contributing. 

First, we got a slow start. Everything is about two weeks behind this year because of the insufferable, freezing cold this past spring.

We've had prolonged stretches of very hot temperatures, accompanied by draught. While we've tried to keep up with watering, that can be a factor with the end rot.

The neighbors used a lot of manure when they put in their garden this past spring. We didn't. Mostly, we used our own compost and the garden soil delivered by a Stillwater company. I still haven't got round to a soil analysis, but that could be another factor. 

More manure next year.

There are a lot of things on the brink of producing. 

They'd best get busy, as the summer is waning.