Summer Days in the Garden

When the daytime highs reach the mid-nineties, (mid-thirties C), something in me switches to pick-and-preserve mode. It just seems like that’s what I ought to be doing, and it is!

No shows for me this year have been Swiss chard, which I planted twice! No joy with watermelons either. I had half a dozen indoor starts that didn’t make it, and neither did the seeds I planted directly in the ground to replace them.

In the fruits and nuts department, we had no peaches or almonds this year, even though there were plenty of blossoms! No strawberries either, because I lost all my plants in last summer’s horrific heat and drought. The apple harvest will be okay, although less abundant than last year.

Pear trees have produced only a few, so I’m not expecting much of a harvest there. A first this year will be my Japanese persimmon!

I planted it in my first hedgerow two years ago and confess I haven’t given it a lot of nurturing. It’s had to struggle on it’s own but it’s survived and beginning to produce! We have a wild persimmon too, but it’s so tall that the only way to get fruit is the ones that fall to the ground. Critters both tame and wild keep the area pretty well cleaned up, however, so there’s never any left for us. Even so, those fruits are small compared to the Japanese variety!

Another first will be crabapples.

This is the first year I’ve gotten more than only 5 or 6 of them!

Blueberries and figs are my old faithfuls.

So there’s my mid-summer garden report. How about you?