Blooming in October

There's always a downtime in early summer when the short-lived spring blooms are done, but the later blooms haven't started yet.

However, come July, the celosia are delightful and the purple hardy geraniums have filled in nicely.

Unfortunately, the middle geranium began petering out (I also MAY have put on some fertilizer that I later saw specifically says "DO NOT USE ON GERANIUMS" oooops...)

Thankfully, though, it all of a sudden shot out a tuft of green leaves from the middle, so I think it'll be ok next year.

So here we are in October: warm, sunny and full of color!

The pots on the deck did alright; I found some new flowers that kept their bloom almost full time (the deck is intense sun all day, so I've found quite a few that struggle...well...perhaps if you water constantly, but that is not my - uh - shall we say, forte?)

I also tried out some perennials, so we'll see if those survive.

I got a sweet william which was rather, well - sideways. I'm very curious if it continues that way or grows upright like the one in my wildflower border. It put out pretty blooms all summer, so not complaining!



My friend gave me some seedlings and seeds of zinnias. I'd never grown zinnias, but I am a FAN!

They are beautiful and lasted all summer!

Looked great with the bees balm which the hummingbirds LOVE!

 I found this little fellow in my edible garden one day; must have fallen out of the hanging basket above. Aww! Maybe he'll re-seed himself!




Some things are still beautifully full, but many others are winding down.
And then there are those that are doing both; browning and succumbing to the colder nights we've had, but also thrusting out a single, beautiful, spring-like burst of color!

So long as these 70 degree days keep coming, I'm not complaining!

Wildflowers!!

I'm finally almost caught up on posts after my terribly long late summer absence.

I said I'd start with beautifulness before going to the sort of fails (well, some are not even 'sort of'! Poor edibles struggling all around :-/ ) and now I'm book-ending with more beautifulness!!

I've been complaining about the craziness of my wildflower border for years; every year there's something! (And by "something", I mean some major crazy take-over or lack of performance by flowers or, or, or, or...)

But this year I am actually very pleased! It's been beautiful from spring up through now with very few "blah" times. 

I finally, over three different days weeks (or maybe months!) apart finished staining my arbor. 

(Weather would NOT cooperate! when we had multiple dry days in a row, I didn't have time! when I had a free weekend, it would rain!) 

It looks soooo gorgeous! Imagine next year when the clematis have scaled higher and bloomed fuller! 

Yay!

And then there's these pretty pink things that get to be over 3' tall and I had to help prop help (ultimately they just ended collapsing onto the hydrangeas, which were very hospitable).

Looking out over my neighbor's yard where they removed
EVERY SINGLE TREE (except 2 scrawny ones; of course one,
a hollytree, is the bane of my weeding existence 😑). I was NOT
thrilled by this turn of events; I love trees!

Very oddly, my gardenia put out two blooms in the beginning of July. Just two.

End of the daylilies, beginning of the black-eyed susans

 

Beautiful colors everywhere!!

The black-eyed susans my neighbor gave me from her yard (and that husband just knew were going to die after I planted them in the most horrid heat and they looked so wilty!) did wonderfully and still have some little flowers holding on even now!

Let's talk about these foxglove...they have gone nonstop all summer producing more and more stalks!


I am so hoping they seeded successfully and I will get them again. Huge success for something I did not expect to bloom this year!

And then there are the seeds.

What seeds?

The enormous bag of wildflower seeds given to my Mother many years ago.

Remember:

The other option is to put the bag in your garage.    Your non-climate-controlled garage...in northern IL (90 in the summer, below freezing in the winter...you get it).  Where the door is opened and closed multiple times a day letting in various levels of light.    For at least 5 years.    Then mail the seeds to your daughter who will keep them inside her doesn't-get-below-60-degrees house for another 2 years.

Then, because she's curious, daughter will sprinkle a bunch into a little pot and put it in the garden.

And they will sprout.

Incredible, incredible seeds!

That's what I'm learning about gardening and plants specifically: yes there's a lot that you're "supposed" to do right and sure, things may not work if you don't...but by and large there are so many things that totally DO just work all by themselves! Even when you did nothing...or even more so: when you did everything wrong!!

So I transplanted them to a lacking corner of the wildflower beds and voila! Beautiful!


We shall see if they reproduce next year as well.

So crazy!

They're enjoying their final days of bloomage next to my newest addition...

I bought a hibiscus! I didn't think it would bloom since I put it in so late, but it did put out a few!



The summer and fall combine!

Well done, little garden! Well done!

Edibles

Good gracious, how have I not updated on the edible garden since JUNE?!

When I posted it was full of promise and excitement! Look what's coming!

Weeeeell, let's go through the run-down:

Yay cherry tomatoes! All 5 of them.

Not sure if it was too much sun up on the deck or what (I really tried to be SO good with watering!), but slowly watched leaf after leaf drop until there was one twig left. 😑



Then there was the super promising huge tomato accidentally grown from seed plant!!

Whiiiich also slowly died a sad death one part of the stalk at a time. [sigh]
I did get a few tomatoes, but most of them cracked; some so much so that they dropped to the ground and were quickly consumed by... ? who exactly is eating rotting, split tomatoes, the squirrels?!

I don't think it gets enough sun down there.
I also recently asked a gardener why tomatoes split; she looks at me with pity as she answers: "Not enough water and then all of a sudden too much water."
😐
Well then.

Definitely can't be that! Doesn't sound like me at ALL!

And then at the end of the summer, the brown, dead twig suddenly starting putting out vibrant leaves at the very top...which was actually now the very bottom because it had fallen over the top of the tomato cage and limped along across the ground. Okaaay.

Oh and did I mention it's producing tomatoes!!   What?!   It's October!!


Those adorable, itty bitty peppers I was so excited about?!!!

Stayed itty bitty.  😑




We do have a million serrano peppers...if only I liked
spicy things and knew what to do with them beyond just putting one into husband's
fajitas every couple of months!


I'm now on about crop 4 of the kale. Not that I've eaten any of it, mind you. It seems to grow large, beautiful leaves just in time for me to be crazy busy and have no time to think about making a kale salad. So I leave it on the plant, fully intending to go back out, 2-3 days goes by and it once again has been skeletonized. Within a few weeks it has grown back, though smaller than the time before, and we begin the cycle all over. Genius over here, let me tell you.


   Now the berries on the other hand!
















 They did incredibly and we ate them all!
Beautiful when they were rippening! So many blackberries! (And the raspberries didn't do quite as well, but not terrible.)
The bushes were overflowing!

Yay! Good job! You grew a really successful crop of something! All it took was hard work and care and determination and pruning...............all of which was done by husband. [sigh] Maybe someday my success is coming!


This season's cilantro isn't taking off as well as I'd like :-(

 Just little bitty stalks after a few months. :-/

Some are getting there slowly, but surely.


We shall see!





But hark! What is this?!

It was peeking a bit in the photo I posted in June, but soon I had it trained to climb the pea trellis...



 And it started blossoming!

Another little accidental butternut squash!!!!

Unfortunately it became what felt like a full time job fending off those icky, awful little squash beetles I talked about before. I'd get so angry I'd smoosh them with my fingers! So gross! But I was not letting them get this plant!

It definitely involved turning over each leaf and finding the little buggers or their eggs hiding and the purge would start all over again! Insanity!

Unfortunately some of the vine has wilted away, but it's still doing ok a few months later and I have a few decent sized squashes, so we shall see!




















So here we are overall:







Explain to me why my cannas waited all summer to finally start blooming now?!


Such a mess.

And I gave up on weeding it a month ago.

That vine is just snaking its way through the whole, dying garden now!


Well, with the entrance of butternut squash and other things dying off, 'tis officially fall.....

   

...except for the summer blooming flowers, fresh green tomatoes, cilantro, mint and other herbs still going strong...  :-D Mind of it's own, these gardens have!

Hose Methods

My garden plot partner and I need help; we just cannot seem to decide which method of watering is more effective!


Method 1:

Drag hose weaving through the garden beds to get to those at the far end; trying to avoid plants and frequently getting it caught on corner of beds or trellises only to look back and realize you've also just taken out a poor garlic stalk that's now parallel with the ground. 
This is the method we have been using for about 3 years now.

Method 2:

Run the hose down the nicely mowed path next to the garden and water at the end of the plot from the side working your way back towards the front thereby avoiding all plants, bed edging and trellises. 
This method was discovered by partner 0.5 weeks ago.

There are not enough facepalms for this situation.

Harvest Time with No Harvest

Welp, the garden wrapped itself up rather early this year...because everything died.

[sigh]

It started off SO promising!

We have some theories on watering and row cover and weed barrier and things that may have prevented good ground seepage. And then there's the fact that every melon and squash imaginable got a different kind of beetle eating them!!

Remember how excited I was at the beginning of August about our fabulous melon plants?!

Here's our melon bed by the end of August:


Yeaaaaaaah.
That's sad.

And remember that adorable little watermelon that had started to grow?!
Yeah; that's as big as it got.  😑

His vine died with him hanging there no bigger than in the photo I'd taken before.
I went out one day and found he had dropped and rolled away, so I "rescued" it and cut it open.
Tasted horrible, but it was so cute!!

The one my garden plot partner grew in her yard, however, was delicious!


The tomatoes actually did give us quite a good harvest; we just weren't great about getting out there fast enough. They split open very quickly or rotted away way faster than it seemed they should.

And as usual we had quite the jungle growing!

Huge tomatoes and medium tomatoes and grape tomatoes and roma tomatoes and asparagus and pumpkins, oh my!

The pumpkin vine wove itself through all of the plants, through the tomato cages (and by 'through', I mean in, not between), out the other side and started eyeing up the pepper bed next door before finally also succumbing to the beetles and leaf mold.

Not before producing some pumpkins, though!

One happily plopped itself right in the smack middle of a tomato cage!

[shaking     head]

Only our psycho garden!


The other one just lay peacefully in the mulch towards the end of the vine which means he actually ripened all the way and looks like a real pumpkin!!

So he got picked and put to very good use.
In fact, should he stay alive for a few more weeks, he will be put to the ultimate use for a pumpkin. Just have to figure out my design :-D

The tomatoes eventually all died out with such finality, you'd think we had been mistreating them. Sad dead vines with rotting tomatoes strewn in their wake. Alas.



The grape vine....good gracious that thing went crazy! And we had grapes!!

The raspberries also started producing again. What? It's August!














Also oddly, the peppers make a huge comeback! Like, actual peppers growing! A bunch! I picked a big, crunchy one and it was delicious!

The edge around our fence was in need of trimming / weeding so badly, but near our trash can was this vine and one day when I went out - behold! Beautiful white flowers!

I was so excited that I showed my partner a picture and she replied with a big groan. "They're morning glories! Get rid of them!"

Oops!

They grow a bit too intensely for our plot's taste, so alas; away they went.

So, aside from some random rogue things that have amounted to very little, I'm hoping some peppers grow well enough to eat and then our hope still lies in our peanuts and potatoes! 

Peanuts, potatoes and peppers!!!
(And garlic and carrots, of course. And the random bok choy that grew; I must have left the root there when I harvested it earlier!)

The garden wrapping up in mid-September: