Garden Progress Journal - 6/27/11

Summer sucks. We've officially hit our summer stride here in Arizona and every day the temperature hovers at around 115 degrees. You literally have to work up the courage to open the door and step outside, which makes watering the garden difficult. Sure, people who don't understand this heat will tell you to water in the evenings, but it will stay over 100 degrees well into the night. Last night it was still 100 degrees at 10:30 at night!

Everywhere else in the country, it seems, people have just started their summer gardens. Here, things are starting to die and the growing season is wanting to come to an end. for instance, last week this happened:

One day I went out to water and it was fine, and the next day it had been dried by the sun to a complete crisp. I always thought it was impossible to kill mint, so I was totally bummed. It didn't just happen to me either. I heard from at least one other Facebook friend who lives here that the same thing happened to her mint, on the same day too. Crazy.

I took the pot and set it on the patio in the shade. I bought a packet of oregano seeds so I could try (again) to grow it. Hey, third time's the charm, right? I was going to pull the dead mint out of the pot and just use that one. Well, slacking off worked in my favor, because...

Baby peppermint plants!!! I was so excited to see those in there when I went out to water today. I'm going to wait until they're a little bigger and then trim out all the dead parts.

The zucchini has completely overtaken that bed. You can just see a teeny marigold peeking out from under the right side of the plants. There are carrots and green onions growing under there, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope for them since they're not really getting any sun anymore. I'm still getting plenty of zucchini though!

Pumpkin vines are overtaking the back yard. They're making it really tough to mow in that area. One of the vines has climbed up into the bush on the right and is now peeking out from the top.

The strawberry plant has sent out a runner, which has rooted itself in the pot next to it that contains garlic chives. I checked and it looks like there is a good root started too, so yay free strawberry plant! You can see that the original plant is still giving us the occasional berry too. It's such a nice little treat when you find one that's ripe, because they're like candy. Nothing at all like the ones from the grocery store.

My tomatoes all have cages now and most of the plants have at least a few fruits on them. The roots are starting to show on some of them so I think I'm going to go get more compost to spread around them. That should add some more nutrients to the soil too.

A few of the Romas are starting to ripen, which worries me. They didn't get very big - they're more the size of those yellow pear tomatoes than Roma tomatoes. I just don't think they're getting enough water since I'm watering by hand. Next year I'm definitely going to have to figure out a drip system, at least for those.

The sunflowers are almost all blooming. They're so pretty!

My zinnias started to bloom too. The plant looks kind of sorry because it was in the sun before and the leaves got a bit scorched. It's in the shade on the patio now and seems to be doing much better, but not all of the stems recovered. There are quite a few that are sort of drooping off to the sides, but the flowers still are blooming. I just love these pretty green flowers and will definitely be planting them again.