July is when the vegetable plants really take off and grow. Three days ago I took several photos of the vegetable garden and am now getting around to posting.
If you've been reading my gardening posts, you know I experimented with planting white clover seeds in the center of the garden where I wasn't going to plant any vegetables. It looks great from a distance. But, although most of the clover did sprout and grow, the weeds outran it. We have bindweed, false morning glory, and pigweeds in abundance. The false morning glory likes to wrap itself around the fence or around the pigweeds. The bindweed spreads out all over the ground and its roots go to China.
Here you can see a false morning glory climbing up the fence by the gate.
I am not sure which one of them has all these pretty flowers. Since they are all tangled up together in the garden, it's difficult to tell sometimes.
Here and there, patches of the clover are truly thriving.
The raspberry patch was relocated to this spot in the fall of 2022. This year it has really filled out and the branches are loaded with future berries. Here's hoping we don't have too many yellow jackets trying to harvest them the same time I want to!
I was delighted to find one or two berries ripe enough to eat.
This area is a mixture of pumpkins, cucumbers, and winter squash, plus a few nasturtiums and marigolds.
This raised bed in a stock tank is an experiment, too. I have mixed feelings about it. The height is great for thinning beets, but the raised bed potting soil I was advised to use is really odd stuff. I planted onions, beets, lettuce and radishes in the stock tank. The lettuce and radishes were old seed and didn't come up. So I used that spot to put in a leaf celery plant a friend gave to me.
Tomorrow I need to add more potting soil to the potato pots. They are growing very nicely.
I simply can't keep up with all the weeds, so these sunflowers are just going to have to grow taller than the weeds! I removed the wire cages when they grew too tall to be kept inside. Only three remain in place, where I had to replant.
The corn and beans are also growing well. I just hope the ground squirrels don't develop a taste for green beans...
...because this is what they did to the peas.
I thought I had put down plenty of mulch around the blueberries, but it turns out I hadn't. I draped bird netting over them and held it down with rocks to keep the ground squirrels out, and the weeds came up thickly along the netting. I was too busy with other garden projects (and grandchildren) to deal with that mess before it got out of hand. Last week I tackled it. I had to use scissors to cut the weeds smaller in order to get them out of the bird netting. This is how it looked when I was partly done.
Here's how it looked after it was all cleaned up. I added more straw to go along with the pine needles for mulch.
Every year presents a set of challenges for the home gardener. Those challenges can include weather, insects, rodents, deer, birds, and physical issues experienced by the gardener, especially the aging gardener. I would love to be able to grow enough vegetables to provide for us all winter, but that's more than I can do all by myself. I am grateful for the option of the grocery store when one or more of those challenges become too much. Meanwhile, I look forward to harvesting some tasty vegetables and berries this year.
All photos taken on my Android phone.