Still Warm

The weather has been unseasonably warm with a record high or two. It's also been dry for a month or so.

The raised beds are slow growing. The left is full of collards, and the right is a mix of turnips, lettuce, Asian greens, and onions.

The carrots and onions are now mulched for moisture retention and to keep the soil cooler.  I'm hoping this encourages larger carrot roots.  Mulching does make a big difference.

Morris Heading Collards

The collard seedlings have grown enough to transplant, so into the south raised bed they went today.  I added some light mulching around them to help protect them from drying out too quickly.  As they grow larger, I can add more.  I also over-planted them, not only in their starter trays, but also in the raised bed.  If any die right away, I have more on standby.  The seeds were very prolific, so hopefully the plants will be resilient.

Morris Heading Collards, small but plentiful.

The back of the bed is standing by for cabbage seedlings, once they get big enough.

All The Seeds

I finished planting one of the raised beds with the rest of the fall seeds I had. 

Seeds included:
Shanghai Green Pak Choi
Ching Chang Bok Choi
Baby Oakleaf Lettuce
Butter King Lettuce
Flashy Lightning Lettuce
Little Gem Lettuce
Salad Bowl Looseleaf Lettuce (Free from library)
Cilantro (Free from library)

Already planted:
Hakurei Turnips
Danvers Half Long Carrots
Oxheart Carrots
Cosmic Purple Carrots
Bunching onions from dad

Here's the layout of the north raised bed:

 The carrots and onions are coming along nicely.

More Seeds

The carrots and onions are up!

I started some seeds today: Brunswick Cabbage (a free gift), Morris Heading Collards, and Five Color Silverbeet Swiss Chard (free from library).  I'm supposedly behind on starting stuff, but last year everything got too hot when I planted earlier.

I still have Harukei turnips, bok choy, cilantro, and lettuces to plant.  I still need to clean out the garden and planters for those since they will be direct seeded.  The peppers are still in the ground, though I have plucked all the fruit (the poblano finally produced a handful or two of small peppers!).

The weather turned a little cooler for the first time this season overnight w/ lows near 60 and window-open weather today.  It will get hotter again though, so I'm trying to be cautious about these winter plants.  Some of them won't even germinate at recent temps.

Meanwhile, I have about 8 native hibiscus plants that are ready for permanent planting.  Will I ever get an area set up in the side yard?  Stay tuned.

Carrots & Onions

Planted carrots and onions today.  Otherwise, still cleaning up from summer garden.

Cosmic Purple
Danvers Half Longs
Oxheart

Cardinal Flower in Bloom

Native Hibiscus Update

I up-potted 12 healthy native swamp hibiscus today.  I hope they can grow enough to survive over winter, even if they die back.  I'm still a bit shocked that almost all the seeds I planted came up.  I'm sure not all 12 will survive to adulthood though, so I'll happily take more than I need.

The cardinal flower is almost in bloom.  It has 5+ bloom spikes this year.  It seems to bloom a little late, but it's probably due to the lighting it gets.  I'm hoping to divide the plant sometime in the winter.

I've let the aphids take over the beans.  Maybe that will keep them away from my peppers and eggplants.

State of the Garden

It's been hot, hot, hot.  Most of the garden isn't doing well.

The tomatoes are done except for a few fruits and some blooms up top. I haven't been watering them, and although they get an afternoon shower most days, it's not helping with the heat. 

The beans have just been tortured by wave after wave of aphids. To the point where I don't like beans enough to keep up the battle. Seriously, ridiculous amounts of aphids. I have sprayed and smeared their dead little bodies off my bean plants over and over and over.

The eggplants and peppers are perking up a bit with the rain.  They are putting out a new wave of blooms, and some are fruiting.  I hope the blooms on the goat pepper produce.

The water-loving herb garden has become a forest of basil blooms. They are feeding the pollinators, a worthier cause than feeding me.

Finally, A Monarch

A Queen last year, Gulf Fritillaries and Zebra Longwings this year, and finally I find a tiny Monarch caterpillar on my pink swamp milkweed!

Not much going on in the garden. Long beans are producing another round, tomatoes are mostly done for the moment although blooming a bit, peppers continue to make a few fruit, herb garden has gone to blooms (basils).  The stinkbugs have been pretty bad.

I'm starting some native plant seeds.  I want to make a small native garden on the west side of my house.  Coming up so far are last year's seeds from the swamp hibiscus.  I filed each seed's coating off in a couple of spots to help them germinate.  Very high success rate!  Hopefully, they will survive over winter, though the above-ground foliage will die back.

Also planted: coneflower, blue-eyed grass, columbine, and liatris.  I replanted the coneflower cells today with fresh seeds off my plant to hopefully give them a better success rate.

Cicada Exoskeleton

Patriotic

Red, white, and blue petunias in bloom.

Zebra Longwing Pupa

It should take about 7 days before the butterfly emerges.

Passionflower Update

In Season: Tomatoes & Thai Long Beans

More Happenings

These eat oak leaves, so it probably fell onto the beans.

Anoles are good for the garden.

African Blue Basil is blooming. Even the hummingbirds like it.

Dug up the last of the onions, which were forming little bulbs.

More Passionflowers

I bought two more passiflora vines to help feed the caterpillars.  There's at least one Gulf Fritillary on the new plants, too.  I hope that's enough food to go around.

Two for One

The hibiscus has two blooms on it today, a first.

Garden Friends

Caterpillar Growth

Saturday, the Zebra Longwing caterpillars looked like this.

Two days later, they look a bit bigger (and the third one crawled up the vine to its brethren).

They look much whiter now as they grow and the spacing between their spots gets bigger.  Ghostly caterpillars!!

Zebra Longwings

I bought a trellis for the passionflower vine and took a closer look at the caterpillars on it. They are mostly white with a little orange tinge on the underside, black spines, and speckled with black.  They are still tiny, but are obviously different from Gulf Fritillaries.  GFs are orange with a black line down their back.  Not much if any white (unless they are the albino version, which still has the dark stripe down the back).

These are Zebra Longwings (Heliconius charithonia)!  I'm excited!  I hope my small vine can give them enough food though...

My native garden looks untidy (it could use hand weeding, but it's never ever mowed), but most of what you see there is Coreopsis, Passiflora, and Aquilegia.  Native magnolia leaves make OK mulch but probably hold a little too much water for my mosquito-disliking self.

Week's Update

The second hibiscus bloom opened today.  The first bloom is growing its seed pod, and I hope to collect a few more this year.  I want to try growing them from seed.

There are at least two eggplants developing.  The dark purple is Rosa Bianca, and the lighter one is Listada de Gandia.  I've already picked one full-sized Listada eggplant and will probably have it with supper tonight.

And here's the rest of this week's harvest (dragon tongue beans not shown).  Tomatoes seem to be peaking, and peppers are fruiting more.

The Passionflower vine needs a trellis, and I noticed some bright orange/yellow eggs on it a few day ago.  Now there are a few caterpillars on it!  I think they are Gulf Fritillaries, but need to look more closely when the weather's not so stormy.  They definitely look spiny, so another option that uses passiflora as larval food is Zebra Longwings.  I've seen both butterflies in my yard often this year.

Vacation

Well, going on vacation was nice, but my cucumbers are ruined by worms and my beans have a new batch of aphids.  I'm tempted to re-plant the cucumbers.  The beans I can spray with soap and essential oils again.

I did pick the eggplant (more are fruiting), a handful of new crop dragon tongue beans, and a bowl of tomatoes yesterday.

The Black Swallowtail caterpillar has disappeared.  I looked and couldn't find a chrysalis, but hopefully it's just well-hidden.

The hot peppers are doing well since it's gotten so hot.  I'm picking Serranos and could pick some Tabasco and Jalapenos if I wanted.  There's even a single Goat Horn pepper growing.

I woke up this morning to this though...

There are about 10 more blooms developing. I'm excited to see if any of them open on the same day.

Big

The Black Swallowtail caterpillar continues to eat & grow.

Sweet Gardenia Blooms

My small plant produced 5 blooms this year.  I think all but one has opened.  Although it's not a native plant, it's pretty traditional to have one of these somewhere in your yard.  My plant is from the plant my parents' have in their yard.  Mine blooms a little late because it gets more shade.

Upkeep

The garden is doing fairly well.  A couple of the tomatoes fell partly over from the weight of the fruit, so I had to re-tie them.  It's been a battle to keep everything watered, so I set up the timed sprinklers again.  Not the best solution since it sprays lots of the foliage with water, but it's easier.

That eggplant.

 Today, I added straw mulch to the raised bed beans and installed the trellis for the long beans.  I need to string up some support for the dragon tongue beans in there, too.

The native hibiscus is really going to put on a show soon. I've counted 8 bloom buds... 5 on this stem and 3 on a smaller one not shown.  Last year I had 3 blooms and one got bent over before it could open.

There's a caterpillar (probably moth) nibbling the hibiscus' leaves that I need to identify. 

I also found the first cucumber for harvest on the vines. It was pretty hidden and was large enough that I should have noticed it sooner, but it was the perfect size when I discovered it.  No harm done.  I'll have to keep a closer eye on them since they are going to hang down below the netting.

I had some more beans, a few carrots from the market, and garlic from my dad, so I made another pint of quick pickled veggies with the cucumber.  I added two Serranos that seem pretty spicy this early in the season. 

I Like to Call Them Pre-Pickles

As the cucumbers continue to grow, I've had to extend the netting for them. 

 The plants have been blooming quite a bit, and baby cucumbers are developing.

The plants are wilting a little bit each day from the heat of the sun and from the unprotected soil drying out, so shortly after taking the above photos, I added a thick layer of straw to the top of the planter.  It's helped to keep the soil cooler and more moist longer.  The mulching has definitely helped the peppers and eggplants in the raised bed, so it seems to do a lot to keep moisture in the soil and temperatures down.  The cucumber leaves still get warm enough to wilt a bit, but they recover quickly as long as their roots are happy.