August 14

I haven't been doing a good job keeping up with this. The only good excuse I have is that it's high garden harvest time and that's what I've been doing in my free time. The garden, and everyone else's gardens nearby is actually about 3 weeks behind because of the cooler summer we've had. There's been no blast of heat in the 90s or 100s at any point. It actually was 45 degrees this morning when I left for work.

These cool temps make some things better and others worse. Tomatoes and peppers are well behind, but some of the greenery crops are doing great, as well as cucumbers. I have never had so many, nor have I had this many squash of all types. They are vining out, and I have several types in abundance - yellow, zucchini, hubbard, patty pan, acorn, pumpkin, and butternut. I have promptly cut a lot of the cucumbers into spears and pickled them, as well as sticking some in the sour fermenting crock. I also started a 3 heads of cabbage batch of sauerkraut that fits neatly in a half gallon jar.

A lot of tomatoes, much more than usual, had blossom end rot and had to get thrown out. I started to get some of these at the beginning of August and only within the past three or four days am I getting rot-free, huge san marzanos. Also in the past few days the cherokee purple beefsteak variety has finally ripened a couple of specimens, which taste amazing. I've had sun gold cherry tomatoes coming out of my ears since the beginning of the month. They have a tendency to split when overripe, however.

The poplar tree in the backyard is starting to drop a couple of leaves. I will write more soon.

July 23

Storms have come back in, dumping a lot of rain, and unlike last year, we haven't had a big heat wave touching 100F. I don't have a lot of corn, but what is there is not very tall and is blowing over in these storms, and I have to go pile dirt around each stalk after each storm. It's marginally annoying. The sweet corn farm up the road has put their signs out and they're selling for six dollars for a baker's dozen. We got some and boiled it up, and it's sweet and wonderful. I like to grill it and put  a little black char to the outside.

Midsummer prairie - aster, black eyed susans, compass plants, and goldenrod.

We have raspberries coming out of our ears. The plants are more productive than I've ever seen. Every day we can go out and pick a nice cereal bowl full of berries. I might need to make jam just to use some of them up. Blackberries, as well, are putting out huge, juicy, acidic clumps of fruit.

The japanese beetles are now starting to slowly show up.

I tried to start some fall cabbage and broccoli again this year, outside in little pots, and the seedlings again either drowned, got nibbled by insects, or baked in the hot sun. I know one year I will accept that I just have to do them indoors, either in the basement or in the shed I want to put up this summer.

I rode past a big fallen branch from a poplar tree yesterday that had been sitting for a while and I could smell the dead leaves. It was the smell of autumn. Of football season, chilly and wet mornings, raking, and crock pots. It was a fragrant glimpse of what's to come soon.

July 21

Haven't posted for three weeks at this point. Things have been busy. I left town for a week on vacation and had a wide variety of stuff to do when I got back. Just to get something up here, I'll give an indication of when I started harvesting some things recently.

I harvested all of the garlic on 7/19. The leaves had yellowed. This year I have only 65 bulbs, about half of what I had last year. Many of the bulbs are smaller as well. I know that a lot of them didn't make it through the winter and never sprouted.

Started harvesting "picklebush" cucumbers on 7/19. Each day I pick a couple. They hit pickle size and stay there.

Yellow squash, zucchini,and patty-pan squash are now pickable, starting this week. The early fruit from each of these had some rotting and didn't get very big.

Peas! Both the snap peas and shelling peas got big enough that they all basically turned into shelling peas. The plants right now are about done but we got two good meals worth of shelling peas out of two rows. There are still some peas developing but the heat has done it in. Once they are completely dead, I will pull them out of the ground and plant a fall crop in the same spot. The plants got about 3 feet high, a foot higher than the fence I put up for them.

Cherry tomatoes developed this week. First couple ripe ones about 2 days ago. There are now starting to ripen some romas as well, none are fully ripe yet, though. No ripening of other beefsteak varieties.

I grew two sorts of potatoes this year and the plants really dried up in the last two weeks. I put the soaker hose on them for a while but one set of plants didn't come back and basically withered, a red new potato variety. I pulled a bunch out of the ground tonight and they look nice, some big, some small. Definitely a better harvest than last year when it was so dry. I only put 10 lbs of taters total in the ground this year, we'll have to see what I get out of it. One of these years I have to try potatoes in an actual raised bed and see what kind of production I get.

I pulled out a spinach patch and arugula patch, and replaced them with more greens.

I can now pick collard greens.

Some corn is starting to tassel. Others in the area have sweet corn ready.

Biked past some lovely summer prairie fields today, filled with purple coneflowers, yellow black-eyed susans, gerber daisies, buttercups, and other flowers depending on how wet the prairie was.

July 2

We are in full summer. The heat has not come yet as expected, lately the high has been near 75 each day which makes for pleasant days.

The peas have really developed in the last couple days and we officially have peas coming out of our ears. The plants have stretched about 3 feet high, a little higher than the fencing I put up for them. Other things we can pick and harvest at liberty - cilantro, lettuce, spinach, radishes, arugula, dill, parsley, oregano, thyme, sage, green onions, chives. We have one large head of broccoli developing.

The cucumbers will start vining soon. The second planting I put in has done well and is catching up to the older plants.
Cherry tomatoes have started to put out green fruit. All tomato plants have flowers now. The peppers in the last two weeks have really sprouted, and some of them have flowers.

Our roses have been blooming for the past week, since my birthday. The raspberry canes are full of small, green, hard berries. A couple of very early ripe ones have shown up here and there. The blackberries are likewise full of white flowers and tiny, hard, seedy green berries.

The plum tree usually has a "junedrop" where it loses a lot of plums, which is a known occurence. For whatever reason this year it has dropped a couple, but has hung onto a lot. I put some fertilizer spikes around it earlier this year, maybe that's made some difference.

The petunia, salvia, etc are all blooming and doing well, as are the butterfly bushes in the front. We have some very dark red cherries, more than we've ever had, in the cherry trees in the front. All of the daisies have opened up as well. The side of the roads are covered in purple aster flowers.

After another planting of corn was nibbled through by animals, I've given up. I'll have two nice plantings of sweet corn, after attempting 4 total. There is another planting of indian corn doing OK.

The beans all have flowers but not fruit yet. The pole beans have found their trellis and are wrapping around up the poles. Some of them are 3 to 4 feet off the ground at this point.

Some potatoes have flowered, but the plants are doing well. Haven't had any need to water yet.

We went to Devil's Lake state park for the weekend. The period of daily thunderstorms has passed. There are many wildflowers present. We also found some wild strawberries which I have not had in a while. You could see the foliage from the bluffs around the top of the lake of the surrounding lands. It was beautiful, all of the trees are green and filled in. You could see patches and groves of pine trees among all of the maple, oak, elm, aspen, and other deciduous species. At one point on top of the bluff a sandhill crane flew overhead.

June 25

I keep seeing new things every day but I am having trouble remembering them by the end when I sit down to write.

Daisies are starting to open.
Almost all tomato plants have flowers on them!
Mosquitos are definitely out, with a vengeance.
I bought a canoe and received it today. Hopefully will get it out this weekend. I noticed the lakes are starting to develop that little green algae all over the place.

June 19

Nothing much new to report. Went for a bike ride late and ended up with a lot of no-see-ums plastered onto my arms.
Some of the potato plants have started to flower. I need to cut the scapes off the garlic.

I bought some windows that will be eventually used in a new garden shed/greenhouse that will be put up in the backyard.

I also bought a canoe online today. I should get it by next week.

June 17

We are hitting temps in the mid-80s today.

The garlic plants are full of scapes as of two days ago. Scapes are the seed heads that are sent up each year. I'll have to cut them all off and make pesto. It's the most garlicky thing I will it, basically raw ground up green garlic with nuts and olive oil. If I allow them to fully form, they make little bulbils at the top of the plant that can be planted again. It's a lot easier to cut them off and then just replant the cloves in the fall, which separate about this time.

I saw a lightning bug the other day. They will be coming soon in waves. They are a great indicator of the general numbers of insects in the air. We went for a bike ride the other day and were getting eaten whenever we stopped.

The peonies are pretty much done, but other flowering trees have taken over. We can now see lots of little green apples on our trees, and very small, very green raspberries starting to form.

Angelica flowers, Queen Anne's lace and Wild Parsnip are all present in wetter areas. There are some irises out there too.

There are a couple of flowers on the pea plants. And the cherry tomatoes have flowered as well. One of the broccoli plants has a small flower on the inside. Last year I picked broccoli a month from today.

Spinach is pickable as "baby spinach" leaves. I will let them get a little larger. Arugula is pickable. The first planting of lettuce (little gem) is just about ready to pick. The first planting of radishes is probably ready to harvest as well. So salads every night for dinner for the next month. I will plant more radishes and lettuce in the spots that are opened up through harvest.

The pole beans are sending out their tendrils, looking for something to hang onto. I've set up trellises that are about 6 feet high.