It was a busy weekend- a girl's shopping day with mom, sister, kid and I. The guys had their own outing- car show and biking. While mom and sister got a pedicure done around lunch time, I perused a couple plant clearances and of course, found some rescues.
Saturday was fully spent shopping, got home at 10 pm- all I did in the garden was water before I left to go shopping.
Sunday, today, was a bit better for getting garden stuff done. The guys outing included a Home Depot run and my lattice work got picked up to finish the arbor/pergola/whatever you call it that spouse and I started last year but ran out of time to finish. Now it actually has all the latticework up.
I'm still debating painting it or leaving it natural. Got the clematis up on the latticwork that was sprawling all over my roses and lupine- hopefully mostly intact. I did hear a bit of cracking even though I tried to be careful- so we'll so how much of it is wilted tomorrow. There was plenty to spare, so it should be fine even if I lose a little bit of it.
Weeded a 4' by 8' veggie garden bed. My spouse is supposed to take care of the veggie garden- were it up to me, I would just have a bunch of potted tomatoes. Unfortunately, he has never really gardened before so struggles a lot with what is a weed and what is the plant- so I'm trying to get the confusing ones caught up for him so he can tell what is what. The bed I weeded today was tomatillos, tomatoes, a couple Jelly Melons, Eggplant Nagaoka Kinchaku, and a couple Sugar Pie pumpkins. YES, it's overcrowded, but, the pumpkins can sprawl into the pathways and that worked fine last year. The tomatoes in this bed are all volunteers from last year, I just can't weed a tomato plant.. lol
Got every single plant in the rose garden watered and all the fruit trees. Went ahead and up potted a few 1 gallon roses to 3 gallon pots because they kept tipping over. Moved most of my potted roses so that they are sitting on top of the solarized beds- I have too many for the beds I solarized - so I guess I have to get out there and get more beds solarizing.
I have a lot more seedlings that need to be up potted as well- got my squash seedlings moved to gallon pots- they will go into the garden the moment we finish eating lettuce. The family knows it's a salad at every meal this week because the lettuce is all trying to bolt. Next year, I am doing more freezable greens. Not sure what to pick- kale isn't a winner here so far. Maybe I'll try spinach.
Picked 5 heads of lettuce and had them for breakfast lunch and dinner today- just need to do that everyday this week so I can start planting the fall stuff without wasting the lettuce.. lol
Cannot wait for tomatoes- there are so many green ones. Hope my family is ready to eat those with breakfast, lunch and dinner because I planted like 50 tomato plants and the garden grew another 30 or so as volunteers. Varieties I'm growing this year include:
Orange Accordion
Orange Hat
Brad's Atomic Grape
Sunrise Bumble Bee
Purple Bumble Bee
Sart Roloise
Phil's One
Korean Long
The volunteers in the garden look to be mostly mutts of the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomato I grew last year- they mostly came up in that bed and have a bit of a purplish cast to the foliage/stems like the parent plants did. Who knows what the tomatoes will be though.
The heat really slowed me down today. I really, really need a day off from work with a high of 70 or less so that I can do one last horrible push through the big tasks and just be able to water and weed the rest of the season.
I really don't like that every year I'm still planting in July- but, nothing to be done about it. I'm still waiting on some iris orders. The band roses don't get shipped until at least middle of May to my zone and then instructions say to keep them potted until they have a 1 gallon full of roots. A couple of the roses I planted just barely had roots enough in a 1 gallon- so not like I could do it sooner either. Next year I may just add a lot less. It's been two years of really heavy additions and I think I want to just mostly maintain next year. But, ya'll know how that is. Then it's winter and the wind is howling and the catalogs are showing up and gardening sounds amazing again as this theoretical thing to do in the warm sunshine. Again, forgetting that you won't be planting on a pleasant spring day but on a 90 degree day in July.
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