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Garden Notes: July 2022

Thursday, July 28, 2022 0:01

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Generic daily forecast:

Hot to hotter

Chance of pop-up showers (and chance not)

Repeat

Rainfall

1st: 0.9″
2nd: 0.1″
5th: 0.5″
7th: 0.75″
8th: 0.2″
15th 0.25″
Total: 2.7″

Temperature

nighttime range: 69-78°F (20.5-25.5°C)
daytime range: 80-98°F (26.6-36.6°C)

Note about summer rain:

The problem with our southern summers, is that the sun and heat will evaporate moisture right out of the ground. So small rainfall amounts have very little effect. This makes it a challenge to keep things hydrated, even with frequent rain.

Tasks

Picking
Preserving

Matt’s Wild Cherry Tomatoes are prolific volunteers

Cucumbers too. We eat a lot of cucumber and cherry tomato salads.

Primarily, we eat as much fresh as we can. If there is extra, I preserve it.

Extra cucumbers become dill pickles

and relish.

Unfortunately, my cucumber vines are succumbing to blight.

On the other hand, there’s been no sign of pickle worms, which usually destroy my cucumbers. If it isn’t chickens, it’s feathers.

Some of my cherry tomatoes have blight as well. This is a common summer problem, but I’ve made an interesting observation. The plants on one side of the garden have it, on the other side there’s very little of it. The unaffected plants are in my hugelkulture swale beds. This is also the side of the garden that gets the most benefit from the garden swale (because it still needs some leveling.) The affected plants are on the side of the garden that has regular bordered beds. All of them are volunteers, so it’s been an affirmation of the extra work that goes into the swale beds.

The cherry tomatoes are so productive that I’m having a hard time keeping up with them. What we don’t eat fresh is made into pizza sauce and canned.

Paste tomatoes have never done well for me, but last year I
discovered that cherry tomatoes work just as well for sauce,

because like paste tomatoes, they aren’t as juicy as regular tomatoes.
That means they cook down more quickly than regular tomatoes.

I also have four plants of slicing tomatoes. We eat the ripe ones fresh in
sandwiches, or quartered as a side dish if we don’t have a tomato salad.

When I get more fresh ones than we can eat, I’m going
to can them with okra, for winter variety in our diet.

And I always make a batch or two of fried green tomatoes as a special summer treat.

This year, we have enough green ones to can slices for frying come winter.

Recipes for canning these and frying them here and here.

The abundance of green tomatoes got me thinking I should pick up another case or two of wide mouth quart jars. But I haven’t seen canning jars (or lids) for sale anywhere. Not even at the places that usually carry them. I’ve managed to scrounge up a few jars at thrift stores, but no one seems to be selling canning supplies this summer. At least, not around here.

One thing that is doing surprising well is my summer squash. That’s amazing because I usually lose summer squash to wilt. In fact, I’ve pretty much given up on growing it, but on impulse, decided to try a few seeds this summer. The first mound didn’t make it, but this one was planted several weeks later.

Healthy summer squash vines!

The variety is pattypan, although when my kids
were in 4-H, we called them flying saucer squash.

July’s fruit is blueberries, of which the birds are eating more than their fair share! That means I won’t be able to freeze a lot for blueberry pancakes this winter, but we’re getting our fill of fresh.

These are great for snacking, pancakes, or on our breakfast granola.

And I made sure we got at least one fresh blueberry pie!

That’s everything that’s noteworthy about my garden this month. How about you? How does your garden grow?

Garden Notes: July 2022 © July 2022 by Leigh

at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Source: https://www.5acresandadream.com/2022/07/garden-notes-july-2022.html

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