This gardening season has been slow. Starting out with a very cold and wet spring, not only were we late getting things planted, things took a long time to get started growing.
We have had a couple good pickings of peas, and are on our second picking of beans. I put the second picking in the freezer since we are eating yellow and zucchini squash and peas. I don't like to freeze peas, they don't turn out very nice. So, we try to just plant enough to eat.
We have enough cucumbers to eat, too. I gave a few to Lorene the other day, because Barry was disappointed I didn't have any for him the last time he was here. Jim has a cherry tomato growing in a big feed bucket on the deck. It's doing very well, partly because it has good soil and partly because it is protected.
The squash is doing very well. I've made three batches of relish, three double batches of zucchini bread, and we've eaten it scrambled, sauteed, sliced and breaded, and grated in patties. That's how we're eating it tonight. We usually eat it every day until the plants die, and then we're tired of it and ready to wait until next year. I am putting some sliced away in the freezer for scramble in the winter.
If you want to know what scramble is, click here.
Jim has been experimenting with wood chip gardening, but he may have jumped the gun this year as the plants in the wood chip area, have not grown as well as the rest. Between the wood chips and the rabbits, some of our garden isn't doing as well as we'd like.
I planted red petunias under the flag pole a couple of weeks ago and the rabbits promptly ate all the blossoms off.
I think they are the suspects here as well.
Spiderwort
Lilies
More lilies.
We've had plenty of rain as well. July 8 will be a day remembered in infamy because of the flooding. We had 5 inches of rain here. Over the weekend we had another 2 inches. This rain seems to all come in a hurry and there are ruts at the edges of the road, in which the rain goes merrily down making them deeper and wider each time.