Summer

Minimally sprawling, open pollinated cucumbers named Little Leaf -from Fedco Seeds. Well, they sprawl less than the Burpee cukes that went in last year, but if it weren't for some clever trellising, the would certainly have sprawled into the paths. They are now supplying about ten cucumbers (picklers) a day. In front, peppers and eggplant; both late producers. Behind, trashy solutions.

The plastic is in place to take out the creeping charlie. It will be removed in late August (late August is so close!) to put down sod. Why sod? The mat keeps out the weeds and minimizes a return of charlie. Here, where the planters were last year, we've had many seedlings of last year's vegetables. Growing up in a cool, moist winter climate, I'd never seen tomatoes sprout from last year's fallen, but in Minnesota's freezer like conditions -the seeds don't rot. We've got several of these in the plastic zone and many more were planted out at the neighbor's farm (where I keep the garlic -which is nearly all harvested).

Adjacent to the tomato is a snapping turtle's nest of eggs to be hatched, we hope, sooner than later. Betsy wants to leave a patch of soil for the mother turtle to return to yearly -but I'd rather it not be in the middle of the grass I'm about to plant. I suspect she'll find the bare patch of soil if I leave it nearby. Funny thing is that I never see any turtles around our place -yet I know there is a giant snapper living out there, somewhere, and then two dozen or so babies head towards the wetlands in fall.

The hydrangea -floppy top. Heavy, as soon as the first real rain hits them, over they go. This year they have been eaten by the deer, pom poms and all. Sometimes they enter the vegetable garden for a second course, should they not get their fill on hydrangea. They've also eaten down the thorny, climbing rose on the trellis -leaving only a full top above their reach. They eat tomato vines, cucumber vines, even buckthorn this year. At my neighbor's garden, they've not only pruned my tomatoes to an even sixteen inches and peppers to eight, they've consumed his giant pumpkin plant -spines and all, a first. They haven't touch the dino kale, potatoes, and garlic.

In summer, gardens do their thing -as do we. This year it is a medley of siding, painting, customer projects, teaching, and exhibitions. I see the work to be done in the garden and it must wait. Seedlings in trays suffer my inattention -yet I keep my eye on these things just enough for them to tug at my desire to do more than is humanly possible.

The front garden is being encroached on by the woods, particularly younger maples that quickly shade out sun loving plants. Oaks and ironwoods do not do this. It's hard to take down living creatures, but the maples will likely meet the chainsaw come late autumn -after I pick up a new chainsaw. The old Stihl croaked last year as I cleared a fallen maple from a path.

Around that front garden is a retaining wall into which I have been ever so slowly moving large stones. The soil is miserable under road bed stuff from last year's gravel driveway rehab. I've got compost to add to the mix, over there, in the shade, now two years old, waiting for my attention and a shovel. Afterward, maybe in autumn, plants will be re-organized to deal with the expanded garden.

One of two woodland edge prairie-savanna hardly-gardens I planted after the studio was finished. These change every year. Without a supply of fresh black-eyed susan seed, it looks rather green. Prairie seed mixes can be rudbekia lush, but the plant tends to diminish once shaded out by perennial grasses and forbs. It's a biennial, so the third season the profusion is limited to small, fuzzy leaves -often at the edge of where they showed up en masse the year before. Each season different plants dominate -this year will no doubt be asters and goldenrod, to the point at which I will likely be thinning them out. Lavender-colored Monarda fistulosa in the background.

The second prairie-savanna garden has a dumpster in front of it, so no pictures of that this summer. The dumpster takes in insulation, wood, old rotting siding and a window or two. I've been replacing siding, piecemeal, every warm season as I convert the house from the pukey-pink paint you can see in the background, above, to the umber-magenta grey visible in the foreground. This garden, along a path from a back door to the studio, is hosta-heavy, magically invisible to the deer thus far.




The brilliant, but less prolific (in these drier conditions ) than I wish American Bellflower, Campanulastrum americanum, is blue-purple in the background. To the left, the very prolific Blue Lobelia, Lobelia siphilitica, about to bloom and a black-eyed susan that found a way to full form.

Beetle Daily

I've been watching these chrysanthemums for two weeks as they slowly unfurled into the flowers you see below. Inordinately early, these mums have me scratching my chin. August, maybe, but early July? 

Maybe double is the wrong terminology for this, so let me be clear: the bee balm stem leads up to the lower flower and then the stem continues through it, leading to yet another flower on top. Is that weird?

Nothing strange about these coneflower, but there they are, doing as well as can be. But it is unusual to have seen so few pollinating insects on them.

Or on the swamp milkweed, A. incarnata.

Or the butterfly weed, A. tuberosa.

Not even this creamy white mystery milkweed, A. mysteriosa, surrounded by the spreading, but also sparsely visited gooseneck loosestrife, Lysimachia clethroides.

Strike that. Yesterday I saw plenty of bumble bees, a few moths, and was even visited by a monarch.

The pom poms I ripped out from the south side of the house and used to frame the curving drive so that snow plows do not run straight over the lawn-ish front yard. A summer solution to a winter problem, these snowballs are simply massive this year. They do not turn blue or pink, a relief really. They fade to a pale pink and cream. Westward advancing Japanese beetles enjoy fornicating on these pillows, but so far have not delaminated any leaves.

The Japanese beetle, Popillia japonica. My grandmother used to give us a nickel for each beetle knocked off her roses into a cup of poison. Surprisingly, they are not yet as common in the mountain west and high plains as they are elsewhere, yet they are beginning to wreak havoc as they arrive. I hardly saw one over fifteen years of Big Woods summers, but this year there are many.

They were first observed on this year's potatoes, but again, they have not fed on the lamina (the fleshy part of the leaf). The potatoes appear quite well, have been mounded up with a yard or two of fresh compost-soil mix, and are surrounded by new, cedar raised structures. Harvesting will begin in a month or so.

This has been quite a year for sap-sucking. Two months ago I spotted whole garlic mustard plants, usually untouched, being drained by black or gray aphids. This particular arrangement, upside down with rear legs unattached is peculiar, but I've seen it before and twice this year.

Here, photographed at a client's garden, the same upside down arrangement, legs pointed out and upward.

The orange aphids love A. incarnata, swamp milkweed, that I planted along the sunny north edge of the clearing around the new studio.

Is it a hard year if they've sunken to sucking on my blue grama grass?

A closer look, not the aphid I was expecting: Russian wheat aphid, Diuraphis noxia, an invasion of a different sort? Maybe, maybe not. Witch hunt. Sad.

In other news, our seeded cucumbers are producing and look quite healthy (no mildew). They are climbing up a cedar framed heavy duty fencing Betsy and I put together (it was her brilliant idea -it attaches to the raised bed).

The home garlic is forty percent harvested, and Hudson Clove garlic is now much further along with most varieties harvested. I'm teaching a two part garlic growing course at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum this fall and spring. Sign up, fly in, do a little leaf peeping, and you're all set.

Wow. All the tomatoes are in. The only vegetable I got in on time was the potatoes in late April. The last bed of yellow, leggy tomato starts was planted on July 11th. Above, the first to get planted in late June or early July -I can't remember. We have three and a half, ten foot long, tomato beds filled with arboretum classroom freebie heirlooms and random, old seeds that happened to sprout. Black vernissage, chardonnay, cream sausage paste, San Marzano paste, stone ridge, black krim, brandywine, and forgotten others are the line up.

An early chardonnay, a large cherry type, is very tasty with a touch tough skins.

Likely a young vernissage, the stripes will remain dark green and the pale green will ripen red, giving the overall "black" color. 

Black beauty -one must remember to wait for the green to turn red.

Garden Report

Potatoes are waning but they're still impinging on the herb bed. As the sun lowers and the potatoes die down, the herbs should reclaim their full sun. In the back left, really tall milkweed.

As the garlic comes out over the last few weeks, the fall brassicas have been filling in. These are brussel sprouts, the first planted, into the space previously occupied by garlic 'Xian.' I've never grown these before, but have planned it for years. Notable this season is a lack of cabbage moths -not complaining!

 

Eggplant fruit coming on now.

Green beans, from purple to roma, prolific and easy as ever.

All peppers are fruiting, some large. Only difficulty is that the plants can hardly hold their large fruit and that I shouldn't be so lazy as to try to break a pepper off the plant instead of going for the pruner. What happens? Well, I break the whole pepper plant in half.

In complete opposite of last year, all our tomatoes are suffering blight. Could have come in on our purchased compost, or maybe because we planted in last years potato and eggplant beds. Hard to avoid poor rotation in a compact garden. Next year I think these beds will be garlic and the garlic beds will be tomatoes. All that can be done now is watch the tomatoes try to outgrow the blight.

More brassica as the Porcelain garlic 'Music' has come out. As two more varieties of garlic are harvested over the weekend, even more brassica will go in. Above is kale started from seed in the greenhouse.

And we've finally started digging into the soil for new potatoes. Above: Kennebec russet, Pontiac, and Yukon Gold. Thanks to the quantity of compost and straw they came out with little soil and easy to clean.


These giant pompoms, hydrangea actually, were moved from the south side of the house last year. We planted them in a great arc around the curving lawn-driveway. They are quite garish, but they keep the plow truck and other skiddish drivers from driving over the lawn and garden in summer and winter (thanks to the long lasting dried flower sepals), and maybe they keep the deer at bay. Maybe.

I've been very busy with many things, from door and sill replacement, old deck removal, job searching and applications, studio building projects, contractors and everything I can't stand about some of them, photographing, studio painting, my class Landscape into Art which runs on the twenty third of July, a bit of socializing, gallery going, and even a music festival in a corn field last weekend. Blogging has had to take a back seat to all this (as well as taking quality photos for them), but rest assured -I was able to plant half of my milkweed over the septic drain field and beyond yesterday. Progress.

New Label

I look outside the kitchen window to see this maple showing color.

Below the nook I see the hydrangea paniculata is turning too. 

Just a week ago the blush of pink was barely visible. "Autumn" is a new label here at MOUND.