Saturday, July 07, 2007

Garden Report for July (or Neighbors, pt. 3)

Temperatures have been hot and are heating up, and so is the action in the garden, both here and next door (left). The corn is getting all tassled, the sunflowers are taller than most of the people and it's time to start pulling up the lettuce and putting in the midsummer vegetables like kale, chard, carrots, beets, broccoli and radishes for harvesting in September and October.

Most impressive at this point are the poppies that SEH planted from seeds she'd gathered, some of which are as big and full as peonies in splashy burgundy, pink and purple. The trick is going to be labeling the stalks so that when the pods are harvested and dried, their seeds can be gathered and kept separate for future reference. I'm volunteering to help, of course, not only because it appeals to the OCD side of my personality, but also in the hope that we can get a few of these beauties for our yard next year.

Speaking of our yard, our raised bed has been joined by a sibling on the slope, and it has been planted with pepper starts (ancho and jalapeno) and sown with flageolet beans. The tomatoes we planted in late April are threatening to pull themselves out of the ground and terrorize the neighborhood ala Godzilla. We're hoping they stick around for awhile, though, since they're starting to set fruit and we'd really like an heirloom tomato salad or two before they leave us to take over the world. And, as noted earlier, you can download plans for Dave's 20-Year Raised Bed if you'd like to build your own.

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