July 16, 2023 Grandma's Garden, Rose Garden, Park Strip, and Vegetable Garden

As is usual almost every year, the heat and the snails are taking their toll on Grandma's Garden.  We had a nice fairly cool spring during May and June, but about three weeks ago Summer arrived with a vengance, and we've had highs in the 90's almost every day, and no rain.  That first week of hot dry weather happened while the family was enjoying the cool, misty weather of the northern California Redwoods, so poor Grandma's garden was a bit neglected.  Gratefully the tomoatoes and most of the petunias survived, but things are still looking a bit scraggly, so we added a few festive pin wheels for the fourth of July.

 

I tried planting a few beans, carrots, and beets underneath the two cherry tomato plants, but the snails always seem to find the vegetables even more delicious than the flowers, so they haven't done well at all.  I planted a few more beans a week ago, and a couple of them are starting to poke their noses out now.  Hopefully these ones will survive!

DH enlisted the help of the Young Women's group from our church, along with their leaders for an hour or so of yard work and weeding via purchasing coupons at their annual camp fundraiser back in May.  Last week was the appointed day, and they showed up en mass to work their magic on our poor rose garden, the front park strip, and the side yard pathway and basement stairwell, which has been overgrown with grass and ivy for quite a few years.  For some reason (mainly taking on a full time job 10 years ago), I haven't done very well with keeping up on the yard maintenance, and DH with his allergies and knee and shoulder and back issues has not ever been one to do much in the yard.  We are very grateful to these energetic young ladies and their leaders for all of their hard work and assistance with these projects!

 

The front park strip . . . still looking pretty dry and ragged and sad without the spring tulips and daffodils, but much better without all of the weeds!

Side yard pathway and stairwell looking 500% better minus all of the tall grass and Ivy

I  believe we are about finished with planting the vegetable garden for this year, finally.  I planted the last of the beans and carrots and beets this weekend, and didn't find the seed display at the grocery store yesterday, so probably won't be adding anything new.  Hopefully we can protect at least some of these vegetables from the snails and the birds and the other critters that like to hang around our yard.   I was only able to get a third of the border area planted with peas earlier this spring, so we've only had a few handfuls of peas.  The rest of the border is only marigolds, peppers, and summer squash and cucumbers.  The first three summer squash look ready to pick for our dinner tonight, and we have a few cherry tomatoes that are starting to turn red, but I didn't get closeups.  

We have three different beds of tomatoes, and they are all started from seed from tomatoes bought at the grocery store.  This is the first year I haven't bought any tomato plants from the nursery, and probably the most tomatoes I've every planted, so we'll so how things go.  We also have some Roma tomatoes that are starting to blush a bit, so I'm hopeful.  I'm not sure how things will go for regular slicing tomatoes though.  I probably should have bought a plant or two of Celebrity or Big Max or something similar?

I planted quite a few new garlic plants last fall, also from grocery store garlic.  I haven't had huge success with garlic in the past, but wanted to try again.  It's probably about time to harvest the garlic and see how well it has done, now that the true heat has hit us.  I'm not sure how soon I will do that though.  We shall see?

I've once again planted three rows of corn on the west side of the garden, and started quite a number of winter squash from seed, also harvested from grocery story squash, probably mostly butternut.  I would have like to have planted them a bit earlier than I did, but so far they seem to be doing ok.  Hopefully we can keep them watered and growing and fertilized during the next two months of probable heat and little to no rain.  

East of the corn is what is left of our little strawberry patch.  I did see about four or five strawberries this year.   When we moved here nearly thirty years ago, we had a very nice thriving strawberry patch, but this tenacious invasive grass has pretty much  done them all in, no matter where I move them or how hard I try to keep the grass dug out, there just isn't enough space for them to propagate and thrive from year to year.  And of course there are still the  snails, the birds and the other critters to share with.

This year I decided to try growing potatoes in grow bags, to see if that would help to increase our yield in our hot, dry, grass infested garden.  They were thriving quite well in May and early June, until the heat hit.  I didn't get the grow bags completely filled up before we left on vacation and the real heat hit, so now they are not looking nearly as well.  Nor is the lettuce that has mostly bolted to seed.  It will remain to be seen if the yield is any better than the past years in the hot, clay summer soil.

This spring I decided to plant an onion patch to the other side of the garden shed, and also planted two asparagus plants just for fun.  So far one of the Asparagus plants has survived, and some of the onions are doing ok.   We'll see how big they can get!

This old tree stump has rotted out enough that I was able to fill in the center with some potting mix and plant a few petunias instead of just placing pots on top of the stump.  It's still been pretty hot for them, but they seem to be doing better than any of the pots planted with petunias in the past.  I'm not the best at keeping the pots watered every single day.

The pansies in the blue pot on the front porch are starting to fade now, but they did last a lot longer than I expected.

The geraniums and petunias in the posts on the back porch seem to be doing much better.  Hopefully we can keep them blooming throughout the season?

And there you have it, that's how my garden grows this July of 2023.