Do you tally your harvests? Some gardeners weigh every ounce of fruit and vegetable picked from their gardens and keep diligent records of their produce pounds. That has never been me.
Until this year. Because I am growing more food on my deck and patio, I decided to keep records of how much of each type of vegetable the container garden produced. And, as long as I was counting the deck and patio harvests, I decided to count what was growing in my community garden plot as well.
While not enormous by the standards of homesteaders or others with very large gardens, my July harvests far exceeded what I expected. Our gardens can be insanely productive, even small ones. But there are definitely plants that will hold off on ripening until August in the North. Given our short growing season, it makes sense to plant a few things that are bred to ripen early.
So what have I harvested in July?
Eight Ball zucchini — 29
Stupice tomatoes — 56 (44 from two plants in the community garden, 12 from a container on the deck) ZONE 3 GARDENERS: You need to grow this one!
Cherry Blast tomatoes — 39 (all from a single pot on my deck)
Akoya tomatoes — 11 (another container tomato with an unusual flavor)
Sweet 150 tomatoes — 30 (I’ve got a long way to go to get to 150, but the vine is getting large and is full of fruit)
Large Red cherry tomatoes — 16 (same as above — huge vine, lots of green fruit)
Sweet Heart of the Patio tomatoes — 1 (this is not the plant’s fault. I planted it late.)
Russian Pickling cucumbers — 38 (from a planter box on the deck)
Provider green beans — 8 (the stinkin’ rabbits at the community garden mowed down all of my bean plants, sadly. I had some open space in my planter box and hope to get a few beans there since rabbits can’t leap onto the deck. Otherwise I still have some pole beans that survived the bunny onslaught.)
Jack-Be-Little mini pumpkin — 1 (not sure how this ripened so fast, but it was ready to be picked at the end of July.)
Of course, much more is on the way. I have tons of huge Cherokee Purple tomatoes that are still green, a few Minnesota Midget melons plumping up on the deck and several other types of tomatoes, peppers and winter squash that are in various stages of green. All in all, it seems like a good harvest for July. How was yours?
Do you count your harvest? How much have you harvested? I’d love to see your numbers!
Harvest, weed, preserve, repeat. August is also a good month to clean up and re-do pots, if you’d like. Some perennials can also be divided in August. Finally, take a few moments to enjoy your garden and, if you get a chance, take photos of what you like and what you would like to change.
Do your spireas look a bit mottled with tattered foliage rolled around a stem? You may have an infestation of leaf rollers. These are the larval stage of one of several moths. Some of them tend to infect fruit trees, while others feed on plants in the rose family, such as spirea. Damage from leaf rollers tends not be serious and infestations are sporadic and localized. I noticed a lot of leaf-roller damage in several gardens I visited on one garden tour, but have seen none in my neighborhood.
To find out it this is what you have, unroll the leaf and see if the caterpillar is inside. Most of the advice I’ve seen recommends just ignoring it. If the damage bothers you, snip off the rolled leaf sections and dump them in soapy water. Contact sprays won’t get through the shelter that the caterpillar is in so those are not useful, and systemic insecticides make the plant toxic to bees, butterflies and other insects. The good news is that this tends to be a passing problem and your spireas will probably look just fine next year.
After our very warm and sometimes smoky July, the weather looks seasonable and lovely here in Minnesota. Enjoy every moment in your garden of our beautiful August days.
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