July 31: Saying goodbye to July

At the beginning of July, I made a promise to myself that I’d pay more attention to the garden. June had been a less-than-stellar month in terms of my caretaker responsibilities, and I knew that I needed to kick it into high gear if I was to get any “booyah” out of the garden.

Given the extreme heat we had all month and the lack of rain during the last half of June and first half of July, my garden needed all the help it could get. Early on in July, I enjoyed the heat and the way it helped the garden grow with the help of my sprinkler. By the second week of July, the heat got to be pretty overbearing on everyone and everything. Watering the garden helped, but it was clear it couldn’t replace the real thing.

July 23: Beans frozen and tomatoes waterlogged

It’s 95 outside and my beans are frozen. OK, it’s 8 p.m. and not 95 (or 99) anymore, but nevertheless, it’s still hot outside. And I’m tired, so this is going to be a short post tonight.

One batch of beans is blanching while another waits patiently.

Blanched, cooled down, bagged and ready for freezer.

The garden, looking east. Peas are (were) in the middle, where all the brown stuff is now.

The garden looking west: what happens when you forget to turn off the sprinkler.

Despite the heat, I knew I had to pick the beans and cukes again today or suffer strings and seeds. It actually didn’t seem that bad, although I only spent about a half-hour in the garden.

July 12-13: Extreme heat back; still waiting on rain

Here we go, another streak of temps in the 90s. I know, I know, it was only a week ago that I said I loved how the heat was making the garden grow great guns. Of, course that was when I thought we’d have more than a couple days of 80s — and maybe some rain — before we got started cooking again.

Beautiful, beautiful beans.

Lettuce taking on bitter taste in heat.

Onions pungent and pretty.

Just love the cosmos flowers.

One of two itty, bitty pumpkins that have appeared so far.

Love the smell of fresh dill.

My garden looking east.

My garden looking west.

July 7-8: Can raspberries get sunburn?

I was picking raspberries Saturday morning when I noticed quite a few of the fruit had white spots on them, some affecting most of the berry. It was the first time I was able to get deep into the patch, and as I weaved my way through it,

Did you know that the individual ‘ball’ on the berry fruit that surrounds the seeds is called a drupelet? Me neither, until today.

Raspberries hiding beneath the leaves.

I kept noticing that berries, mostly ones on or near the top, had white spots.

I was about two-thirds of the way through when it hit me. The raspberries looked like they had sunburn.

The previous seven days were all 90 degrees or hotter, so it made sense that raspberries could suffer the same effects that people out in the sun did. And the white discoloration was the burn, right?.

A quick Google search when I got back into the house confirmed what I thought. White Drupelet Disorder Apparently when sunscald (the equivalent of human sunburn, I guess) “is associated with White Drupelet Syndrome, the side of the fruit exposed to the sun will be white whereas the shaded side will remain normal.”

Unfortunately, it appears that the only thing one can do to prevent sunscald is to not plant the raspberries in the full sun in the first place.

Given that my back yard is all-sun, all-the-time, my only option might be one of those big patio umbrellas on wheels — you know the kind you can roll around wherever the sun is? Wouldn’t that be a sight!

Well, even with sunscald affecting my raspberry patch, I still picked about two pints of good berries. As Rachel Ray would say — Yum-O!

July 5-6: Super summer heat great for (most of) garden

I think I’m one of the few people who has actually enjoyed the extreme heat we’ve been having. Yes, I sweat like a pig and get tired much more easily when working in the garden.

But how can a gardener not like weather that enables fruit and veggies to go wild?

Thankfully, I’ve been able to water when needed, so for the most part, nothing is hurting from the lack of rain.

The peas seem to be hardest hit by the hot temps, at least the early rows I planted, which are somewhat brown despite getting enough moisture.

July 4: Why is my pumpkin trying to get out of my garden?

Spent two hours in the garden this morning (in 90-degree heat, no less), determined to finish the weeding. Got it all done, plus picked a few peas and the first raspberries of the summer. They were a great addition to my lunch of a BLT with lettuce from my garden and the tomato from the local farmers’ market.

My favorite photo of the day is of my lone pumpkin plant, which sorely looks like it wants out of the garden. It came up near where I had planted pumpkins last year, although it’s much closer to the fence than I ever would have planted it and actually is growing into the raspberry patch.

Since it doesn’t really have anywhere else to go, the pumpkin vines are climbing up over the fence and through it. I like how it looks although I’ll have to keep a close eye on it.

At a previous garden, I didn’t train the vines at all, nor did I watch them. Before I knew it, a pumpkin was growing on the neighbor’s side of the fence about 3 feet off the ground! My neighbor finally had to break it off because it had grown so big I was afraid it was going to fall and splatter all over the place!

July 3: Baby it’s hot outside

Oh man, it’s hot out. It’s 8:30 p.m. and still 88 degrees. That, combined with a dew point of about 70 has combined to make it miserable. It appears the dog days of summer are here – and it’s only July 3.

I waited until the sun went down a bit to get some weeding time in. Mostly one-handed weeding, because I didn’t want to reopen Monday night’s cut to fingers on my right hand. I spent about only about a half hour pulling weeds around the tomatoes before I was drenched in sweat.

Looking west (after tomatoes were weeded):

Beans, glorious beans

It never fails to amaze me what less than a week of 80-degree weather can do for a garden. It was the beans this week.

When I watered the garden last Saturday, very few beans peeked out of the ground.

But voila, by early Sunday evening, little green shoots had popped out in full force, a couple inches it seemed. A little more water and heat, and they had another growth spurt. And so it went all week long. I know the cliche “growing up in front of my eyes” refers to how fast kids grow, but it also appropriately describes garden crops like my beans that literally grow inches overnight.

Three cheers for early veggies!

Wow, where did the time go? Oh, that’s right — track, soccer and basketball. The garden — and my Garden Booyah blog — unfortunately have taken a backseat to my daughter’s sports activities. That’s not to say I’ve totally ignored the garden, but I definitely have been ignoring the blog. For that, I apologize. I’ll try to catch you up.

A little over a week ago, I planted a second row each of lettuce, onions and peas. I also replanted the bare spots in the row of lettuce and one of the rows of peas I planted on April 19. Our warm March turned into a lot of cooler weather in April and early May, so they needed filling out a bit. All in all, though, I’m happy with them. If the weather stays the way it has been for the past several days — high 80s, low 90s — it won’t be long before I have fresh lettuce for my daily salad. And the peas? I think they grew two inches the past two days alone! I can already taste fresh peas in the pod for supper — as Rachel Ray would say, “yum-o!”