Garden Friday

 

 

 

Welcome to Garden Friday,

where we share what's growing in our Zone 7b garden.

Sunflowers are an all-time favorite.

Not only do they grace us with their beauty,

but they feed the birds and us as well!

 

The sweet potato bed is filling in.

A few more slips were planted 

to replace some that disappeared.

It's always so much fun to harvest potatoes of any kind.

You just never know what lies beneath the soil.

 

A couple of what I believe to be birdhouse gourd plants

showed up underneath our wooded area.

These seeds were sown last year,

but nothing ever germinated.

I guess the almost 7 inches of rain we got this week did the trick.

 

Basil has been harvested for tea,

which I did "suntea" style on the front porch.

I'm hoping to make a batch or two of pesto

that I can put in the freezer.

It's still early in the season for this crop,

so I should be able to accomplish that goal.

 

It's so exciting to see the corn growing!

Even if we don't get one ear,

it's been fun to watch this plant do what it does.

Maybe next year I will plant even more.

Nothing says summer like corn on the cob

smothered in copious amounts of butter.

 

Some of the Jacob's Cattle beans dried on the vine.

I'm pretty disappointed with my bean crop so far,

and it's something I need to get good at.

Beans are a large part of my diet.

It will be on my mind next spring when I give this another go.

 

 

Did you know that something eats okra besides humans?

I don't ever remember the okra getting decimated this way.

A closer look found these nasty buggers,

 

which quickly went into a bin and were fed to the chooks.

They love 'em some Japanese beetles!

Here's another critter found last night.

It seems to be eating holes in the cucumber plants,

but it's not affecting them, so I'll leave them be.

My approach to pest control these days

is to leave things in place as much as possible,

and let the beneficial insects take care of the balance.
 

pest patrol

 

That volunteer squash I found growing 

behind the straw bale has succumbed to a vine borer.

The plant never did develop any female flowers,

so we probably wouldn't have gotten any fruit.

I plan to sow some winter squash soon.

 The chooks have been getting a steady diet of not only beetles,

but also tomato hornworms that I've been bringing home from work.

Some of them are almost too big for one hen to handle!

It's hilarious to watch them fight over them,

trying to snatch it out of each other's beaks.

Life is better with chickens.

 

These lantana took a while to start growing,

but they are a lovely shade of pinks and yellows.

I'm hoping they will come back after the winter.

 

The cannas around the chook run have been blooming 

for a few weeks now.

They are interplanted with sunflowers

and I have a few more cannas to transplant 

from other areas of the yard.

 

The lavender and allyssum have been moved out of the sun.

The heat seemed to be too much for them,

and they weren't doing much.

I think they'll be happier on the front porch.

Ruby

 

It's amazing how rain will do so much for us.

Not only does the garden lap it up,

it cools off these humid summer days

so that the evening hours are quite enjoyable outdoors.

 

How are you spending these summer days?