End of July Vegetable Garden Visit

Posted on Categories Organic Vegetable Garden

Another summer month has come to an end and it’s time for a garden visit.  On the down side, July brought bug bites, hot scorching sun and drought conditions.  We’ve had only a few scanty showers.  The sight of drooping plants, as shown below, disturbs me but this shot also shows the cucumber vines climbing (a positive sight):

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The biggest disappointment this month was animal nibbling by a skunk, rabbit, fisher or other mammal.  For the first time my peppers have been eaten…they bit the lower ends off! Onion greens were also taken, as were the tops of several milkweed plants!  The solutions?  First, I put up enclosures to discourage sampling.  I have a few peppers left and hope a few will ripen to red.  This shot shows the pepper plants with extra protection:

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My second solution is putting out food offerings to keep the critters fed and less interested in my crops.  I have put out corn, carrots, and discount zucchini from the store.   This shot shows a chomped off milkweed plant and a nibbled zucchini offering.

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Thankfully there have been peas, beans, spinach, cucumber and zucchini to pick and a wonderful garlic harvest.  And I have a hose that delivers water so the garden hasn’t fried to a crisp like the rest of the world.

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Pole beans
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Zucchini: the stems are prickly
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Cucumber (notice the prickles on the hanging cucumber)
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Heirloom spinach with a wild mint plant in foreground.
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Red onions, struggling this year, but surviving
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Winter acorn squash flowers

By mid-July I dug up all the garlic—not an easy task as the ground was hard.  Fresh garlic is attractive (especially when it’s your first garlic harvest):

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Published by Janice

My name is Janice.  I started blogging as Ontheland when I moved from Toronto to a rural area near Kingston, Ontario in Canada.  Over time I have found myself writing poetry, mostly in Japanese forms, such as haiku and haibun.  One of my deepest interests is the natural world: the joy of it and how we can look after it better.

17 thoughts on “End of July Vegetable Garden Visit”

  6. My husband is the gardener. He was putting food out to keep the critters from eating the pears this year. It didn’t work. The squirrels are bad about taking one bite of the fruit before it’s ripe and tossing it on the ground. Ultrasound devices don’t seem to be dissuading them, either.

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      1. We have one Florida Rock Pear tree and the other is a Chinese Pear (or so my mother told me). The rock pears are hard and can easily replace apples in a pie. The Chinese pears are the delectable ones. The squirrels seem to like throwing the rock pears at each other and chewing parts of the good pears. 🙂

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      2. The seed company is Mr Fothergill’s and the seed is Perpetual Leaf Beet. It is a heirloom variety which probably makes it hardy.

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