End of July Bale Garden Update

I missed June and we are now at the end of July. Here is my very tardy garden update. Up first is a picture I took this morning. Excuse the watering can. It catches excess drip-off from my dripper hose. 

Arch One (left) has seen some good progress with indeterminate tomato growth. You can see the plants are reaching for the sky. We periodically tie them as they grow, so they do not fall. Arch two (right) also has some good growth on the far right side where the indigo pear plants are growing. Both bales kind of blocking off each arch were purchased last. We only planted those at the end of June, I believe. They hold squash plants. 

Speaking of squash, we picked our first (and so far only) zucchini today. I have blamed myself mercilessly for my five kinds of squash and my watermelons and cucumbers not coming up. Today, I will provide vindication. 

A few weeks ago I lovingly tucked around twenty more seedlings into bales. I kid you not, nearly the minute I got back into the house and shut the sliding door, birds descended onto my bales and plucked them all up. You could have knocked me over with a feather! I have never had this problem before. Most likely, because I keep my birds fat and fed. This year, as you may or may not know, feeding birds and providing water has become a no-no. There is some unknown disease killing songbirds. No longer able to depend upon me for direct food, their eye as turned on my garden. I do not begrudge my beauties their dinner; even if it means that there will be far fewer crops growing from my bales this year. 

In an effort to spare you a lot of reading. I will switch over to pictures with very short descriptions of what we *do* have growing in the garden. I won't cover everything: just those of which I have recent photos.

These are our first tomatoes of the season. They are Pink Princess Cherry Tomatoes. Unfortunately, both my Pink Bumblebee and my Sunrise Bumblebee plants died of unknown reasons after being properly planted. 

These are my Indigo Pear Drops. They are about the size of a yellow pear tomato. They will be yellow with a kiss of the purple/black you see here.

These tomatoes are the Black Beauty variety. As you can see, they will also be kissed with a black/purple top. The bottoms, I am assured, will ripen to a nice red. This is how we will know when they are ripe enough to pick. I am curious to try these and see how they taste.

I am including a larger picture from this morning so you can see how my little Giraffe's Autumn Sunflower plant has taken off. The packet said that it would grow around five or six feet tall. This is easily in the nine-to-eleven-foot range. Both Hubs and I can fully extend our arms above our heads and not come close to touching the top. :)

You will find my Tigger Melon plants vining through tomatoes along the back fence, as well. In some ways, I suppose it is okay that the birds kept emptying two of the other bales. It has given these guys room to expand without choking anything out. These are "third time's a charm", as this is the third consecutive summer we have grown them - but only the first time they have 'taken' and we will see fruit. I am elated!

The chives are growing like crazy. I am not using them quickly enough. The cabbage is coming to a head right beside them. You can see a fair amount of bug damage in the cabbage. I wasn't able to do anything about that until recently. I am considering looking into planting a second set as part of my fall planting. We shall see. I need to redo lettuce once it eventually cools down some, as well.

We planted an entire bale of green beans and only this little guy survived. Again, I claim vindication on behalf of my green thumb. The birds have done a real number on my garden this year. I love them so much. I wish them happy eating. <3

An identical fate befell the peas. I planted two entire bales of Alaska Peas and Sweet Peas. This one little fella is the only man standing. I don't have a picture of it, but next to him are the Dill and Parsley plants. I planted those mostly in hope of enticing Black Swallowtail Butterflies to my yard. We have so enjoyed them in the past. So far, no such luck. To be honest, the birds are likely picking off the caterpillars and other insects more vigilantly this year, as well.

I do have some other photos, but I believe I will end here with a final summary. My beets are growing 'alright'. However, I feel that they, the radishes, and especially the Purple Dragon Carrots are all suffering from the heat. I cannot seem to keep them happy, no matter how hard I try. Failing a good rooting, we will at least have delightful greens for salad. 

Of the twenty-four specific varieties of tomatoes I planted, I can only confirm that around nineteen or twenty are actually rooted well and growing. I lost two to a careless spill of my youngest. I lost two more inexplicably after planting. I have a suspicion that if I go through and count, I will find more missing from the count. Some of my tags burned out in the sun. Other plants I had multiples of and some did not survive. I honestly do not know what all is out there. As they finally begin to come ripe, I will get it sorted out. 

As stated above, the Tigger Melons are my only large fruits growing now. My watermelons and canteloupes didn't survive the birds. My squash plants were all in the tray that my little Pie dropped all over the place. I have not seen any Delicata growing, nor Yellow Crookneck. I *believe* I can guarantee that I have a single Butternut Squash plant growing, a single Zucchini, and a single Spaghetti Squash plant growing. There are two little plants (one a vining squash and the other that looks more like a zucchini) struggling to grow that could turn out to be any of the above. 

My cucumbers did not survive the birds but I did save one half-dead plant from the front of our local Kroger. It is vining now but still struggling. Every wee cucumber so far has died without pollination. If it wasn't so blasted hot, I might try to pollinate by hand some morning. The heat and my little Pie's unexpected ankle injury have kept me mostly indoors. You can tell, too, because my green peppers are going red and are riddled with holes from hungry bugs. I can barely get to them, over the sprawling potato plants. (None of which have started to flower yet and one bucket *has* begun to die.) 

The garden continues to be a literal hot mess this year. I have finally gotten out two mornings in a row. I've vowed to myself to keep a better eye on it from now on. We'll see how long that lasts, with another blast of blistering heat due Monday... ;) ;) ;)