The highlight of this month is Bolt’s birthday. The love of all our lives, and my gardening buddy turned 8 on 7/11/2024.
It is uncharacteristically dry in our area during the month of July. The temperature soars and it becomes imperative to water the plants often. We had multiple days of temperature over 90f this month and the first rainfall of the month came on 7/29 – so we went with no rainfall almost all of July. Since my garden is large, I have to hand water areas of my garden which becomes very tiring. This is the month every year that I question my decision of expanding my garden so much and I feel like I want to downsize. I will table this decision until a later time but the fatigue is real.
The garden is also tired, but with annual flowers, dahlias and the veggie garden at its peak, there are still exciting things happening. The dahlia beds are now full, the self seeded larkspur are blooming beautifully, geraniums look lovely and this year I grew cosmos from seeds! I tried direct sowing in the previous years but failed. This year I sowed the seeds indoors and transplanted the seedlings. How beautifully they flowered! Unfortunately, the Lime Green Zinnias and not as profuse. And I also grew dahlias from seeds – the first one that bloomed is such a beautiful color.
There are days in the garden when I am totally blown over the beauty of something I grew! This is exactly what happened when a I dahlia called “Verrone’s Obsidian” first flowered. This is the first time that I grew this dahlia (I got the tuber from a gardening friend) and it is definitely the most black dahlia I have ever seen. Isn’t she a beauty?
In the veggie patch, I harvested a lot of peas this year. The radishes have all bolted and I am waiting to harvest the seed pods which I heard are delicious. I also pulled out a large garlic with huge pods even though I didn’t plant any last year. I think a pod remained in the ground. I am a disappointed that the beefsteak tomatoes have only one fruit with a lot of flowers. I was definitely not expecting these healthy looking plants that I painstakingly grew from seeds to not produce much tomatoes. Thankfully I also planted a variety called Roma “Monica” which I got from a local gardener. That has a couple of tomatoes so far and I am hoping to get some more before the season is over.
A huge surprise in the side yard is a tree which I thought was a Winter Berry. It turned out to be a plum tree and it bore lovely, sweet red plums this year. The Japanese plum in the backyard is also full of fruits waiting to ripen.
I started sowing seeds for fall – coriander, swiss chards and beets. As with every year, I am now ready for the summer to be over and cooler temperature and rain to be back.
The highlights of my garden in July are captured in the short video below:
simple urban living 