The hardware cloth cages are working to keep out whatever was excavating my planters last year. Yay!
The beans are up and doing better than last year, when I may have over-watered them.
The sage and thyme are growing steadily. I was concerned that the location wouldn’t have sufficient sun but apparently the situation is adequate. As I am just one person I don’t need too much for my needs.
The rosemary, though - it’s still alive but it is not thriving. I guess my location (which is limited) is not that good. Ah well, live and learn.
Still debating whether or not to do a late crop of lettuce or chard in my one remaining planter towards the end of summer.
Have some pretty little yellow flowers on the honeydew vine and at least one of them looks like it might just be starting to turn into fruit. I’m very excited!
The whole reason I planted the melon is because store honeydews necessarily are picked unripe so they make it to the store without rotting, but that means they taste awful. I wanted to grow my own so I could let them fully ripen.
Herb garden and the greens are all doing great. Have a little forest of basil and chives going, and it looks like we’ll be having home-grown mesclun salad in a few weeks.
The honeydew vine is taking over that enclosure, but it’s got at least 3 fruits growing on it. I’ve finally got a fruit growing on one of the tomato plants (we planted everything fairly late), and the one red pepper fruit growing on that plant is getting bigger and bigger every day. Super excited about those melons.
Crepe myrtles, agapanthus and Salvias are flowering abundantly.
Just harvested a mess of wild blackberries, which are very tasty, especially if you are diligent about making sure the ones you put on your oatmeal don’t have any admixed bugs (note: Japanese beetles do NOT taste good).
I still feel like everything is at least 3 - 4 weeks behind last year because of the cold spring. No ripe tomatoes yet, and the cucumbers are just starting to come in. We did have a bumper crop of turnips, and it looks like we will have a decent number of melons. And so far (knock wood), the late spring meant that the squash vine borers haven’t attached the squash…yet, anyway.
Well, the green beans are played out I think. The plants certainly aren’t doing well. Lost two of the herbs to a burrowing animal - think it was a squirrel - when the hardware cloth slipped. So I got a handful of beans for my dinner (which were tasty) and my sage is still staggering along. The sage is the herb I thought most likely to succumb but it’s a tough little bugger.
Time to rip out the beans and plant some chard. I think I might have time to get something out of it before the hard frosts.
Next year I need to either get more hardware cloth for the other two pots or just give up my container garden because of the squirrels and rabbits. Would probably be easier if it was a genuine balcony but it’s a second floor walkway and the critters have all figured out how to negotiate the stairs.
My tomatoes have been a bit too successful. They’ve grown so much they’ve pulled out the tomato cages and are now falling under their own weight. I’ll probably keep them in for a couple more weeks (and enjoy more BLTs).
My honeydew vine is drying up. Had 3 fruits growing, but only one of them grew past the “hairy” stage and I ended up cutting the two runts away. The last fruit is still on the vine, but it’s not getting any bigger. I might try throwing some fertilizer at it and see if that does anything. I’ve been very careful to water it appropriately. Not too much, not too little.
And my one little red pepper fell off the plant. It’s only about 2 inches. I stuck it in the fridge, and I’ll make teeny salsa with it later.
The main fig harvest is underway (the first, or breba crop was nowhere near as abundant as in 2021). Should have enough in a day or two for full-scale drying.
I’ve been getting a bit more serious about fall gardens, so to that end I sowed lot of bush beans at the beginning of the month in hopes that they’ll produce a big harvest come late September or early October. This morning I pulled dozen or so lettuce that had bolted and sowed some new lettuce seeds in their place.