Garden Journal: Mid-month Update From the Laughing Dragon Garden!

We are closing in on true midsummer in our little corner of the world. Since today is the 15th of July it's time for another gardening update from The Laughing Dragon Garden!

One of our amazing sunflowers. More about them, further down!

It has been very dry around here, and in spite of the fact that we live in the allegedly "rainy Pacific Northwest," we have started to water on a regular basis just to keep everything alive and thriving.

The rutabagas are continuing to thrive; they were thinned the second time and some of the tubers are now approaching 3 in in diameter.

The particular type we have can grow to be up to two pounds each and will be a nice fall vegetable. They supposedly keep growing until the first frost, but with our typically mild climate, who knows?

We're keeping a watchful eye on them, though, because the cabbage white butterflies do like the greenery, and if they lay eggs and the caterpillars start eating, they can decimate the tops on no time at all.

It's our first year to try rutabagas, so it'll be interesting to see how they turn out!

Looking good, so far!

The leeks are slowly progressing, and are actually starting to resemble leeks. Until fairly recently they looked more like chives. It looks like they might need another thinning; so far the ones that were transplanted seem to have survived the ordeal pretty well!

Leeks... becoming leeks!

Our potatoes are in various stages of readiness, with the plants actually inside the garden fence starting to look a bit "aged," perhaps because they were some of the first things we planted. Meanwhile the plants out in what we call "The Annex" are also doing well and quite a few of them are flowering. The ones inside the garden fence are mostly Yukon Golds, with the ones outside generally being red.

Potato plants in our expansion "annex" garden

This is also the time of the year when we start looking up.

Our aging apricot tree is going to produce a somewhat meager harvest this year but we're grateful for anything we can get since apricots allegedly don't even grow very well in this part of the world.

Ripening apricots

Meanwhile, it looks like we will have a decent Apple crop this year.

We gave the apple trees a fairly good pruning over the winter, and had no great hopes for this year's crop.

However, they seem to have responded very well to their "Haircut."

These apples were already on the property when we moved here, and they were actually planted in the middle of the fenced area the previous owners used as a vegetable garden.

However, they were are bit "sprawling" and the main issue was that they created rather a lot of shade, somewhat limiting what we could grow in our fairly small space.

We contemplated taking them out completely, but decided to save them and we're glad we did!

They give wonderful apples for pies, for apple butter and we may even try to make some cider, one of these years! They generally are very well bearing, often giving us well over 100lbs of food!

As far as other fruit goes, strawberry season — at least the first "session" — is now pretty much done and over with.

Most of the berries we ate fresh, but there were also enough to make some delicious jam!

However, at least some of the plants we have are allegedly ever-bearing and I am trying a new strategy of trimming the leaves back now (rather than in the fall/winter) and thereby inducing additional "mini seasons" throughout the summer and early fall.

Haven't tried this approach before, so we'll see how it goes.

So far it seems to be working, as there are quite a few blooms to be seen on some of the plants. It would be lovely if it worked out!

New strawberry blooms

For the first time since we moved here, this year we are being treated to more than just a tiny handful of delicious black raspberries! They're actually fairly small fruits, and I think they're semi wild but they are certainly wonderful tasting!

Black raspberries... yum!

The blackberries — which are actually our "domesticated" but still very invasive and spiky Himalayan blackberries which @denmarkguy has done his best to tame — are now a mass of flowers and I am hopeful they will give us a bumper crop of blackberries in a month or so.

Blackberries flowering...

My goal is to have enough that we can make wine with them this year!

I mildly tolerate having them — the thorns are truly nasty, and they self-seed EVERYwhere — but do like the end result. It's @denmarkguy's job to keep them harnessed!

Of course, there are also lots of wildflowers because we like to keep it pretty! We have pretty limited space, but there is always room for what we call "Sarah's Meadow!"

Speaking of flowers, one of the most ridiculous things we have in the garden is the deep rust-red sunflower that you saw in the thumbnail picture, and at the top of this post.

It is now approaching eight feet tall which is perhaps not so unusual for a normal giant sunflower, but... this particular species allegedly seldom grows beyond three to four feet!

In the photo at right, you can sort of make out two smaller ones, growing next to it. That's evidently the "normal" size.

I guess it's a mutant of some sort, because it is also setting five flowers at top! We love it though!

Most of our sunflowers actually end up being "volunteers," and it seems like every year we end up with one particular plant that's just ridiculously tall. Some years ago, we grew a regular yellow sunflower that rose to near 15 feet (4.5 meters or so) and was quite the talk of the neighborhood.

When we harvested the seed head, it was almost 18 inches (46cm) across!

The 2023 version of what we like to call the "Mater Forest" is coming along nicely.

It took a while for the plants to get going because it was cold in the late spring and early summer but now they're getting going one and setting lots of flowers and fruits.

We expect it will be a somewhat late harvest this year due to the slow growth and early lack of sun, but we're keeping our fingers crossed!

One of them (inadvertently) turns out to be a Roma tomato plant which wasn't intentional and we didn't really notice until some of the fruits showed up oblong, but we're quite happy to have it.

I wonder how much harvest we will get from these six plants? The previous record for this small bed was in excess of 120 pounds (almost 55kg)!

These will become giant "beefsteak" tomatoes

Meanwhile, the first "round" of lettuce greens, arugula and spinach have been pulled up, and the second round is now starting to sprout and hopefully will give us some nice fresh greens within a couple of weeks.

The second "season" of arugula, getting going!

The snow peas are one of our favorite things and they are starting to do quite well with lots of new flowers and lots of crispy delicious pods.

Snow peas in bloom

Meanwhile, our climbing beans are doing well and doing what they always do, climbing out of control!

I expect they will eventually keep climbing and cover the whole roof of what used to be the chicken pen and they're setting flowers and little beans already.

These particular beans — which come from heirloom seeds that are self-harvested and about 7-8 years old now — are among the most productive plants we have. It's not unusual that we can harvest 8-10 pounds of beans, three or four times... and have plenty to eat-as-we-go.

We like them because they freeze well, and they are also quite good to pickle!

This year we are looking for a good brine recipe that will produce a sweet-hot flavor, similar to our favorite "Wickles" pickles you can get from the grocery stores. Sometimes...

What's also cool about our Beanyard is that it is quite vertical so we can get a lot of yield out of our fairly limited space. This is an urban (or maybe suburban) homestead, after all!

Speaking of pickling, the herb garden is going quite well, although we are reaching that point in the season where everything is getting pretty "tall and leggy."

The dill is setting flower, heralding the start of pickling season!

And that's about it, for this rather lengthy update! This post was not created by me alone, though... I was "supervised" by Herman, our resident male quail, who stands guard on the top of the fence.

Herman and Mrs. Herman have a flock of some 15 babies (a guess... it might be more!) roaming the area, and sometimes they roost on the roof of the Beanyard. Never a dull moment around here!

Thanks for visiting! Comments are always welcome!

(All images are my own; some of these by @denmarkguy!)

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