July is the height of farm season requiring more work than probably any other month — at least in Chicago. With the sun shining, enough rain to keep all of the plants happy, and many, many happy weeds, I have had little time to write. Here is what’s going on:
Peas
They are done! Next weeks pictures will show the pea plants exhausted and done producing. I will likely pull them out of the grown and replace them with a fall crop. I planted 8 plants of peas — the middle plants grew the highest and the plants on the ends grew the lowest. That must be normal given that my bean plants are doing the exact some thing.
Swiss Chard
This is when Swiss Chard shines. The spinach is wilting in the hot sun and it is unlikely I can keep it shaded and cool for the hot summer months. I will likely replant in late August or early September when the sun is a little less strong. Swiss Chard on the other hand is much more robust. It is growing nicely and very large. I prefer smaller leaves, but this time of year I have so much other work going on, it is easierto let it grow large. I have a few plants spread throughout the garden and they are all looking good.
Beans
The bean plants are now higher than the fence. But alas, no beans yet. I check every day for greasy grit beans but they haven’t started to “fruit” yet. Greasy grits are known for their “highly productive” vines, but they haven’t started to produce yet. They produce about 60 days after planting which would be this week. I’ll keep checking.
Cucumber
I over planted cucumbers this year because I just can’t get enough. I have about 6 different cucumber plants planted. They will each product about a dozen or so cucumbers this summer. If you look in a grocery store, you’ll see that some have marks — this is where the cucumber laid on the ground (if you’ve been pumpkin shopping, you’ve likely passed up pumpkins with too many marks from lying in the dirt). To prevent this, some people grow cucumbers on a trellis. I just don’t have enough trellis space for 6 cucumber plants (plus pumpkins and watermellon). My cucumbers will suffer a little dirt, but last year they tasted exactly the same. Each plant is about a foot tall. They’ll keep growing all season and start winding through the garden. Sometimes I cut it back — or you can just wind it in a ball.
Peppers
The peppers are so close to fruiting. A lesson in fruiting plants — they flower, then they fruit. A flower is just about to pop up on the pepper plant. The main problem this year with peppers is that they want a hot sun. We just haven’t had enough 90+ degree days to help them along. There is a good possibility that the pepper plants will flower but they may not fruit.
Watermelon and Pumpkin
At this point, you can’t tell much of a different between the two in the pictures above. They eventually will look pretty different (other than one being orange and the other green). These plants will get huge and they’ll take over the garden if left uncontrolled. The watermelon is among the tomatoes so I’ll need to make sure they grow away from them otherwise they’ll grow right up the tomato supports. In fact, two years ago, my pumpkin plant grew up a tree.
Tomatoes
Here they come! There are tons of baby tomatoes on every variety of tomato plant in the garden. Lots of them. The early plants will turn red first while some of the late varieties will keep growing for another month. One of the plants (oddly enough, I didn’t photograph it) only grew to about 2 feet tall (the rest are close to 4 feet right now). The 2 footer looks like it hasn’t been getting enough sun — but it still put out a few fruits. They are troopers. Last year a suffered some bottom rot at this point. I plan to add a bottom rot supplement this weekend to prevent it from occuring this year. Last year at this point, we had the perfect combination of hot sun and good rain which allowed the plants to grow extremely fast. That fast growth led to not enough nutrients reaching the tomato fruits themselves. I doubt that will happen this year, but I also don’t want to lose the first few tomatoes.
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