The Potager in late July

It seems you wait and wait for things to eat, then suddenly, you are having a hard time keeping up with the harvest. Isn't it wonderful?
In particular I am talking about squash and cucumbers, but today I noticed that I'd better pick some purple beans. I didn't even realize they were at that stage.

 We have tomatoes. They are very small, but every day we have some with dinner. They taste great and there are larger ones on the vine getting riper every day.
I am not sure what to do with these Black Krim. I've never seen one, so I don't know what they should look like when ripe. Unfortunately they are splitting on the vine. I guess I'll pick them and let them finish in the house where bugs won't get in the cracks.
And something is in the vines of my Amish Paste tomatoes. I haven't had time to really examine and see what it is, but half the plant is very yellow




I took out the broccoli plants. While they were still producing broccoli off shoots, they were quite bitter - I'm guessing it has just been too hot. We have had several days over 100 and most days over 90.
I will plant snow peas there in a few weeks, getting ready for fall.

I planted more bush beans, but the hot weather fried several seedlings while I was at work.

I'll have to wait and see if any more are going to germinate. It's pretty sparse right now. You can see the areas that receive a bit of shade in the afternoon. The seedlings are all doing well there. I guess I should have set up a shade cover.

A few of my Everbearing Strawberry plants are producing fruit! It will only be enough to sprinkle on cereal or ice cream, but I'm excited.
I need to get some bird netting soon.

This made me laugh. I guess it's a twin? It's a white scallop squash with two blossoms!

The two weeks I wasn't really working the garden, the raspberries exploded. They are hanging all over the place. I need to get hubs to make my containment system. There are several baby raspberry plants in the raised bed, and quite a few on the ground outside the bed! (Ugh! those weeds! This area really needs some TLC)

Strawberries are planted

I received my Strawberry order the day before my big party last weekend and so they stayed in my crisper drawer of my fridge all week. When I got out to the garden, I was a bit surprised to find that while I thought I had ordered 25 strawberry plants,  I had in fact ordered 75. I do not have room for 75 plants. That is the problem with seed catalogs. They make you dream big!

The first step was to trim the roots to 4 inches and to cut off any old leaves or branches.

The work shelf that hubby had built into the Potager came in handy!

After they were all trimmed I had to fit them into the Potager.

I was able to fit in 25 Ozark Beauty strawberries. These are ever-bearing and, according to the directions, should not be allowed to develop runners.

It also said to pinch off the flowers until July 1.

The June bearers took up a bit more room. They have to develop runners and have all their flowers removed this year.  I planted the Annapolis closer together than it said to (about 12") in a row, only having room for 8 plants. I only had room for 8 of the Jewel also, but I tried planting them in a zig-zag to give them the 18" apart it said in the directions. These will be matted beds, meaning they will fill in the spaces between with runners (baby plants) and give me lots of berries next year.

To remember what is where and what I need to do, I put the instructions on a stick and put it next to the fence.

In order to fit in the strawberries, I had to move the Asparagus.

More about that later.

This is the back of the Potager, which is now devoted to strawberries.
I am planning on getting copper tape to try to stop the slugs from getting the berries before I do!


I had a lot of left-over June Bearing Strawberry plants.

So I potted up a bunch in a large pot near my back steps.  I am not trimming off the flowers on these and will happily eat what ever they give me, then, sigh, compost the plants. There are 12 plants, 6 of each, in this pot. (And this picture was taken 4 days after I planted the strawberries - the Jewel strawberries are taking off! In the garden bed also.) The rest of the plants were gifted to a friend who likes to garden. Sharing plants with fellow gardeners is one of the things I like best about gardening.