From beloved commentor and master gardener Satby:
Newest tulip bed, fenced in AND mulched with used pine nugget kitty litter to deter squirrels. Which worked great. Don’t use for food crops though!
My Mandarin Lights azalea blooms better every year. I gotta paint that porch 😵💫
First blossom on my Joseph’s Coat climbing rose. It’s in a pot, planting into ground this year.
My iris bed, not quite fully blooming.
And, at top: some later blooming iris, with an Asiatic lily coming up below the right one.
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The Heat Dome has mostly kept my tomato plants from flowering, but this week I celebrated a small triumph: My first ripe SunGold cherry tomato. Keep hope alive!
And both our untended multigraft cherry trees are heavily laden with ripe fruit… if I can get the Spousal Unit out during daylight, when it isn’t raining, to help me pick some before the birds & beasts claim the whole crop!
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
Jeffg166
Great color in that garden.
My garden is dying. The heat and lack of rain is doing it in. It’s survival of the fittest now.
This week I would like to tear out all the spring/early summer flowers in the bed in front of the porch that are now seeding and harvest the seeds.
I am thinking about sowing foxglove seeds in the bed in front of the porch for next year and not planting anything else there to let them have all the space and light they need to do well.
MagdaInBlack
I’m always a sucker for iris, satby, thank you.
Not my garden, but… at the gas station near me, in a seam as you pull in, grows a foot tall corn plant. Someone, somewhere, feeds squirrels, and somehow one little kernel found its way to this seam in the concrete, settled in and by god grew! I am damned impressed with this little plant even tho I know its days are numbered.
Happy Sunday
eclare
I am also a sucker for irises, love the peach color.
JPL
Beautiful!
MomSense
Gorgeous flowers!
Baud
Very nice, satby.
OzarkHillbilly
Beautiful flowers, nice seeing that at least some of your hard work is paying off for you.
delphinium
Love all those flower colors-so bright and cheery!
sab
We closed on the house so I am spending the summer ignoring my lovely yard as I pack up the house stuff.
I will really miss the old yard. We even have a creek in back.
But we are giving the oldest kid the old house. He is thrilled to return to street he grew up on. His girlfriend is thrilled. She has been renting her whole life. She has loved our hose and yard for years. She is an avid gardener and I am too old and tired ( bad heart) to keep up any more.
Fkortunately she and I will have time this summer and early fall to relocate the plants we love.
delphinium
@Jeffg166: Hope your garden will recover soon. I love foxglove-such pretty flowers.
Lapassionara
@sab: having someone in your family moving into your house is the next best thing to staying in it yourself.
thanks for the lovely photos, Satby
MagdaInBlack
@sab: @Lapassionara: Passing your garden on to someone who loves it as much as you do is a beautiful thing.
Baud
@sab:
Sweet.
WereBear
Gorgeous blooms, especially the iris. Thanks.
satby
Thanks everyone! It was a good long cool spring, and for once I got to enjoy the spring blooms for more than a couple of days.
@sab: My oldest son and my daughter-in-law initially rented my house in Chicago when I first moved to MI, just because I wasn’t ready to sell. Three years later he took over the mortgage and we made a contract sale. I was back visiting yesterday and was surprised by a beautiful bed of hybrid daylillies in the front, same as a couple I have here. I asked Nikki when she planted those, and she said “never, you did”. One. I planted one.
It’s nice to go back and enjoy something you planted 30 years ago thriving. Best of luck on the new move.
satby
The heat dome officially left last week, though yesterday was a miserably hot and humid one day repeat. Even with fans, the farmers market was stifling and I was relieved to drive two hours in the air conditioning to go visit my kids. Leaving at 4 CDT, it hit 100°. Only 89° in S.Bend when I got home at 6 EDT.
I have to check, but only the cherry tomato had set a single fruit before the heat arrived. Nikki was worried something was wrong with her tomatoes too because not a single flower had produced fruit. We have a week of cooler delightful weather setting in and the tomatoes should finally produce.
MomSense
@sab:
I’m really happy for you, Sab.
OzarkHillbilly
Everything is blooming here at the hillbilly haven. Except for the sunflowers, they need another month or more.
My first mater is ready to pick (San Marzano), I have 2 egg plant fruits (little fingers) developing, a number of sweet peppers (lunchbox), Gonna be a while longer before I get any hot peppers. My beans were decimated by rabbits and I am trying to resurrect them while I rabbit proof that garden, it’s gonna be a down year for them.
@satby: We’re looking at highs of 80 the next couple days and then summer returns.
Ken
I often get that feeling with annuals, especially the small wildflowers. “OK, got eight leaves up and running, time to put out a flower and set seed.”
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Kristine
Lovely flowers, satby. Glad you’re getting some cooler weather—same story here in NE Illinois.
I’ve been working on rehabbing the shade garden off and on. So far I’ve pulled up ostrich ferns that were crowding other things and cleared a large patch of Solomon’s seal that I’d allowed to go bonkers. My next goal is to clear out some of the wild violet and lay a path with lannon stone.
It’s been a banner year for the astilbes and wild hydrangea thanks to the spring rains. The bee balm and fringed loosestrife have bloomed and some of the milkweed will flower as well. It’s been a good year despite the wacky up and down temperatures.
Kristine
@sab: wonderful news!
Scout211
Nice pics, Satby. I love the bright colors.
We have a heat wave coming starting tomorrow for at least 14 days. They are predicting temps from 102-112. Ugh.
My garden is doing well right now but the long string of triple digits will be hard on the veggies. I harvested my first few red tomatoes and all six plants have at least 15 green tomatoes so sauce making is in my future.
The bad news is the voles have found a way into my garden enclosure and have started eating the melons. That hasn’t happened for about 5 years. But vole season has been really bad this year for some reason. They are everywhere on our property. I sprayed castor oil and set traps but it’s hard to get rid of them once they find a way in. I ordered 30 wire cloches and I hope I can protect them with wire underneath and cloches over the top of the melons. I will be setting traps every night for likely the rest of the melon season.
We have had many spot grass fires around NorCal and it looks to be a worse fire season than last year. But so far, most of the smaller grass fires are being extinguished quickly. One local one was over 400 acres and three homes were lost, though.
I highly recommend a valuable app called Watch Duty if you live in an area prone to fires. The free version is very good with updates from many sources, including emergency radio communications from fire services and law enforcement. You can set notifications for several counties besides your own. It also maps power outages and red flag warning areas. It has been very useful in the past few weeks.
O. Felix Culpa
Beautiful flowers, satby! Hard to pick a favorite, but I especially love the Jacob’s Coat rose.
We got a gullywasher last night. I haven’t gone into the garden yet to see if there’s any damage. Grateful for the water, though.
Yesterday I saw a beautiful yellow, white, and black striped caterpillar on my dill plants. Looked it up … and it’s a (future) monarch! So I let it continue snarfing down my dill.
Gvg
@Ken: years ago I picked some crinum seeds from a mall parking lot and started them in logical spots with room but one rotted one rolled away into a driveway crack next to the house. I was living at my parents after graduation, job hunting in a recession. A few months later my dad and I noticed the plant was bog enough to be cracking the driveway and threatening the foundation. We had to chop it out with an ax. I planted the partial bulb halves we got out and at least one of them grew and flowered in less than a year from seed. The others did too. Crinums are pretty unkillable in Florida.
Gvg
The Florida based Tomato Growers Supply company notes which tomatoes will set fruit in heat. It’s called heat set. Also which are heat tolerant (and which are cold tolerant and or fast growing for short season places). I have learned to prefer heat set tomatoes because Florida doesn’t really have many cooler day. They also carry peppers and give info for those. Totally Tomatoes lists the info also butt not quite as carefully and doesn’t carry as many hot weather plants because they are based in Wisconsin, but they do carry a some and a slightly different selection. Not surprisingly, a lot of the best for heat are bred by the University of Florida.
We get a lot of hot days, but we don’t get days over a 100 like some of you are mentioning. Advantage of being a peninsula and getting ocean breezes across from water to water. Always plant trees too.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: 68° high here 👏👏👏today and 76° tomorrow, so I can finally hit the yard duty (mowing, some weeding). Then mid-to low-80s the rest of the week, but overnights in the 60s and less humidity. I’ll take it, the high heat makes me a comatose slug.
@Kristine: In the fall, I have to go back to Chicago and divide hosta and daylillies for my kids, and trim out the wild cherry trees that are going to kill the shrubs they’re mixed with, my son can’t really tell the difference. I should get some nice hosta starts for my efforts 😉
satby
@O. Felix Culpa: Thank you! hope everything’s ok in your garden, I’m looking forward to when your native plant restoration is a future garden chat! I just wish desert roses grew here, so pretty.
Mousebumples
Looks great, satby!
Ken
I am not one to talk, since for decades I was able to get my mom to iron my shirts by setting up the ironing board and putting the shirt on it the “wrong way around” — but are you at least making your kids watch as you do all this yard labor for them, and treating it as a teachable moment?
satby
@Gvg: I had to look that up, beautiful flowers!
@Gvg: I looked for a more heat friendly tomato this year, along with my old favorites. Even with a span of hotter nights, it’s normally only a short term setback on fruiting now; but it’s likely to get worse. My main trouble is that I prefer heirlooms. I hope they’re around for future generations.
satby
@Ken: 😂 Nikki has long wanted me to show her. She wasn’t at all a gardener when they got together 17 years ago, most 20 yos aren’t; but they and the yard are maturing together.
Nikki also couldn’t cook when she moved in with Dan, and his other roommate (and sporadically #2 son, poor Nik!!). All the boys could cook, and very well too. Now she’s a cook and baker.
Even my exchange kids learned to cook and do laundry in my house, no servants in residence. Nikki often thanks me 😆
Another Scott
Beautiful pictures and flowers, satby. Thanks.
The dewpoint is 75F here in NoVA at the moment. Heading out to walk Ellie. Send a search party if you don’t hear from me later…
Cheers,
Scott.
satby
@Another Scott: Aargh! Good luck, I feel for you and Ellie, who has to wear a fur coat! Hope you get a cooler break soon.
JAM
Lovely garden, Satby, I’m glad you get to pass your garden down to someone who loves it too. I only planted two tomatoes this year, Cherokee purple, and a grape with spider mites. So my tomatoes are covered in powder and smelling like farts. But both plants have a lot of flowers and green fruit, so hopefully they make it to harvest.
BenInNM
Beautiful flowers – thanks for the pictures. I need to get my act together and send in some pictures.
Otherwise, the monsoon season has started here and a good storm passed overhead last night – 1.31” of rain per my rain gauge. Not only is the rain nice, but I’m happy my various rain mitigation measures are working. Before, that much rain would have turned the back yard into a mess but now there’s only a few things to clean up.
TerryC
We are in mulberry season, just out of black raspberry “black cap” season, but the birds are eating the mulberries as fast as they ripen and I haven’t gotten one yet. We set out 50 baby bare-root red mulberry seedlings this spring and hope to see their fruit in a few years, they are all doing very well. I grafted 6 different kinds of fancy mulberry varieties onto some field stock in April but only two varieties took. We’re going to have a banner hazelnut year but walnut production doesn’t look great.