If the beginning of June offers optimism for gardening in Georgia, the first week of July is the moment for questioning why on earth anyone would choose to garden in the south. As expected, within days after sending June’s update, the caterpillars and Japanese Beetles made their appearance. I’ve kept the Japanese Beetles at bay by hand plucking them from my Dahlias and okra every day, while sweating profusely despite my attempts to beat the heat and humidity by arriving early. Unfortunately, the caterpillars required organic pesticides as there were too many to keep after and last year I lost a good portion of my tomatoes, dahlias and peppers to them. The temps rose steadily throughout July and while I escaped the heat by vacationing in Montana with my family, the garden and my phenomenal volunteers managed to keep most everything alive by watering with the sprinkler as the farm managed to go over three weeks without a single drop from the sky. As of today, we have had three afternoons in a row of the most welcome rainstorms and it’s nice to see the soil return to a rich color vs the dry, cracked earth that has been spreading across any land that isn’t hit by the sprinkler. Today I pulled the spaghetti squash vines as the vine borers managed to get to them despite my wrapping the young stalks in aluminum foil. Though I am considering the foil a success as it appears the zucchini, summer squash, and other 3 winter squash varieties are safe (much to my children’s dismay). I was able to harvest about 15 spaghetti squash which I hope to ripen off the vine and fortunately it’s early enough to replant.
The tomato plants are bursting with tomatoes and we had the pleasure of eating the first ripe tomatoes of the season two nights ago. I’m hoping many more ripen in the next week as the temperatures are expected to be in the mid to high 90’s for over a week starting next Monday and nothing likes to do much of anything in heat like that!
But as miserable as gardening can feel this time of year, there is no better feeling than walking away from a garden, arms full of produce, knowing that I made it all happen. The collages of this summer’s progress are just a hint of how much a garden changes throughout the summer and when I have time, I’ll create some collages of how far this garden has come in the last year and half. Getting your hands dirty and creating value from nothing is incredibly rewarding and I will do my best to remember that for the rest of this week while I fight the pests and tolerate the heat because when it comes down to it, I would choose sweating in my garden to sitting in an office!
The events calendar remains empty for now as I put together a fall schedule. I will be teaching a Botanical Mocktails class at Old Rucker Farm on August 8th from 12-1. I believe the class will be $15 and you can register through their website here.