Fall Gardening Slump

Well, it isn't really Fall, but I'm getting ready to start school again, so it seems like it.  My gardening mojo drops dramatically when I start thinking about work.  I have the best job in the world for gardening--summers off!--but I do get a bit distracted just when it's time to harvest and maybe do some cold season crop planting.  And forget about fall clean up!  That comes when I'm well into a frenzy of grading papers.  I just barely manage to shove a few bulbs haphazardly into the ground in late October, before I completely ignore the garden until May.

Jelly Bean Tomatoes

My jelly bean tomatoes are producing really well, although it would be a lot easier to harvest the ripest fruits if the whole plant hadn't fallen over, due to completely inadequate support.

This is clearly a complete disaster.  It's impossible to dig through the foliage trailing along the ground and find the tomatoes that are ready for eating and this entire area of the garden is full of chipmunks reveling in the jungle I've created for their convenience.

Okra Update

The okras are trickling in at a rate that makes them difficult to use (what does one do with three okras?).  For next year, I need to do a succession planting so that we get a series of the right size crops.  

In other okra news, I still don't like it very much.  However, I've suggested that my husband make his favorite okra recipe using the much less mucilaginous and much more delicious asparagus or zucchini, and he's willing to try it.

People Are Assholes, A Continuing Series

Last week someone left a variety of items in my garden in the area between the sidewalk and the road (the name of this common landmass is apparently still under hot debate on the interwebs).

This is a pillow; in the picture below we have part of a car's bumper and more standard litter in the form of a water bottle, partially empty.

Is it so difficult to pick up after yourself?  Is it so difficult not to leave bedding material lying about in other people's gardens in the first place?  Naturally, one's bumper could fall off anywhere, but pillows would seem to be easier to contain.

Dog Pee: Nature's Herbicide

This spring I realized that my dog had been peeing all winter in one spot in my rock garden.  

I knew dog pee wasn't good for plants, but I had no idea it could be so devastating.  Now I've blocked off the area with potted annuals and herbs, and the sedums are starting to spread into the devastated area.  It actually looks ok, and it's handy to have the herbs so close to the back door and the kitchen.  I can't wait to see how the garden looks next spring, after a whole year of protection.

Here's the culprit, looking completely innocent:

 

I thought about trying to train him to pee somewhere else, but he's kind of elderly, and it seemed kinder just to prevent him from peeing on plants I care about.  It's worked fairly well, though I can't understand at all why it's more satisfying, from his point of view, to pee on expensive plants instead of the mulch or the vinca and weeds that I have in an unobtrusive back corner of the yard.  He still tries to circumvent my blockade every once in a while, to get back to his most favorite place to whiz.

Idiosyncratic Light Requirements

I love this hardy hibiscus plant, even though it's a bit leggy.

I have a feeling that a lot of my sun-loving plants out front in the bed near the road are struggling with too much shade, leading to leggy behavior.  Interestingly, though, I've got phlox further back in the front yard that gets even spottier sun and seems to be doing well.

It doesn't even have powdery mildew this year!  This morning I was drooling over a Bluestone Perennial catalog and noticed that they list phlox as requiring absolutely full sun; I have quite a few phlox plants doing reasonably well in what I would call part sun to part shade. 

Self-seeding Impatiens

Who knew that impatiens would seed themselves?  Ok, possibly a lot of people, but I didn't.  I planted some impatiens here two years ago, and they've come back ever since.  Of course, it's a horrible spot for impatiens, since it's dead in the middle of a large bed and they are low-growing plants that belong at the edges, but whatever. 

World's Most Evil Tree

Last winter, on this spot, we had a hackberry cut down to create more sun for my garden and because it is horribly invasive--I spend all summer weeding baby hackberries.  Now I've got a hackberry shrub growing from the stump.  It's the tree that would not die.  I think I'm going to have to investigate chemical stump killing options.  What kind of respectable tree survives being cut down?

Sour Grape Tomatoes

For some reason, my grape tomatoes are not as sweet as they should be.  Thanks to my super consistent automatic watering system, they aren't splitting, but they also don't taste very good--yesterday I made a simple pasta salad with good olive oil, salt, pepper, pecorino, and some grape tomatoes just picked from the garden, and it was good, but the tomatoes were awfully tart.  I can't imagine what I've done wrong.

Travel Vs. Tomatoes: An Emotional Dilemma

Before we left, I was really worried that we would miss all the tomatoes, but in fact, we came home to the same monstrous plants full of green tomatoes.  The tomatoes are just ripening now.  Can't wait to make my first caprese salad.

Is There Such a Thing as a Garden Sitter?

After two and a half weeks away, the weeds have taken over.

On the other hand, I'm happy with my new purple sneakers, and with how much my elephant ears have grown.  Before we left they had barely produced three leaves and I was sure that Home Despot had sold me some dud bulbs.  Now just look at them!

Okra

Who knew that okra would grow so well here, and that it has nice flowers?

Now we just have to find a way to cook it where it doesn't come out slimy and horrible.

Shittiest. Flowerbed. Ever.

In an attempt to create a sort of unified bed with some kind of design coherence, I planted a bunch of lilies all together.  However, this was before I read The Garden Design Primer, which sensibly suggests planting in drifts, to avoid this kind of random placement.  It really does look much better to put plants into groups of three, five, or seven of the same exact plant.

Here's what this bed looked like on July 20, at it's "best":

I want to divide and move these lilies so that I have big, eye-soothing drifts of the best colors mixed in with drifts of two or three other types of plants.  Unfortunately, I'll have to wait till they're in full bloom since I neglected to label them this year so I'd know which is which later this fall or early next spring.  Another timing disaster!

Here's what it looks like now, on August 12:

Ugh.

The other problem is that while daylilies look nice individually, they don't last and so each plant has lots of dead flowers or empty stems.  It's really a plant that is best up close:

Frankly, even up close it's not that great.  I suppose you have to deadhead every five minutes to make this work.