July Garden Tour

I keep hearing how everything is late this year, but you couldn’t tell by me. Everything this summer has crept up on me. I wasn’t ready for my birthday in June. July 4 went by like a blur. And in the garden, I keep feeling like everything is early, even though it is the Feast of St. Benedict, mid-July, and so there is no denying it is summer.

In the early morning hours, a storm did all my watering for today, while I lay awake incanting “no hail, no hail, no hail.” Not only was there no hail, the tomato cages didn’t even blow over.

I do believe this is the best year I’ve ever had in the garden. I can state that unequivocally because, well, there are peas! There are never peas! I’ve struggled heartily to plant them at the right time, in the right place, starting them inside and out, in what little shade I have or in sun. They have either not grown at all or they have plumped too quickly and been hard and dry. But this year I’ve had a good run on snow peas and now have big, beautiful, plump shell peas hanging on their vines. The green arrow peas look just like the pictures in the catalogs, snug in their pods in long rows, emerald necklaces, green pearls. Last night, I harvested a whole cup and made pea pesto. I’m not sure if this helped, as I think it’s really about the fact that we had a cool June, but I planted them in the “shade” of the asparagus plants, which seems to have worked.

I’ve also been a little haphazard in my green bean planting. But this year I’ve got vine and bush varieties, and the bush plants are already putting out tender, long beans, while the vines are full of blossoms. (The red blossoms are scarlet runner beans for delicious, giant shell beans.)

I’m watching the zucchini and yellow summer squash, sometimes checking them in the morning and picking them in the evening as they grow to just big enough.

The potato bags are really not thriving, except for the blue variety, which has gorgeous purplish vines and had great blue flowers. (Good thing I also have a giant bed of potatoes.) The other night I rooted my hand around in one of the yukon plants in a raised bed and plucked out three golf-ball sized potatoes to put in that night’s medley. With shallots, basil and thyme, the sautéed vegetables just come together by themselves. I can afford now to be a purist, nothing from the produce section but lemons, limes and ginger for the rest of the season!

I’m letting the cilantro go to seed, which will be coriander that I can grind. I’m also letting some lettuce go to seed for fall planting.

I usually don’t plant anything in July, but I’m tempted to replace the beet bed as soon as I finish harvesting it. For one thing, I got one kohlrabi (another is ripening) and would like some more for slaw! And I neglected to grow chard and would like to have some for the fall. And I might try as an experiment to plant the fall beets a little earlier.

Meanwhile, another plant I’ve had trouble growing, eggplant, has blossoms, and the tomatillos are like Chinese lanterns on beautiful plants.

No doubt fall will be along soon enough and catch me by surprise as well. Steve mentioned that the air has felt particularly like August the past few days, dry and a little hazy. And yesterday afternoon a red tint to the air…