July Gardening Update

From Gardening

We're still playing with sprinkler and timer setup, but after a period of daily afternoon thunderstorms, look who finally joined the party? I was beginning to think some of the kale we planted just wasn't going to grow. You can see that some kind of bugs, maybe snails, are also a fan, but it doesn't matter. We will chop it down and put it to good use soon. I've seen a few Japanese beatles flying around today but nothing like last year.

Knock.

On.

Wood.

From Gardening

We do still have some lovely ruffly lettuces growing. The freckles lettuce got tired of waiting for us to harvest it and has shot some seeds up into the air. Really, it doesn't matter, it was too bitter and we didn't enjoy it. But this little bright green lettuce, Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce, has grown very nicely in its limited space. We should try more of it next year. It has a mellow flavor that is great in sandwiches.

From Gardening

The strawberries are still growing, and the blueberries have started ripening finally. The birds have been hanging out around this plant quite a bit, but there were still some berries left for us. We planted two new plants this year, but they are in their teenage years and are not being very productive. Hopefully by next summer, we will have three producing blueberry plants! The first blueberries of the season were put to good use, as you can see over here in the baking blog.

From Gardening

We have two watermelons coming up in the watermelon patch that we did not plant. So that's exciting! We welcome plants that *want* to grow without any assistance. Except you, weeds, who seem to have found their way into our raised beds this year. Blame the birds again, I imagine.

We finally planted some more herbs and tomatoes a weekend or so ago, but it might have been too late and too hot. We'll see if they make it!