The Madman’s July Garden Maintenance

            July is here. The garden is in. The plants are growing. It’s the official start of the madman’s’ summer. Time for the Madman to relax, play and maintain.

            We aren’t too crazy about the maintaining, but it is a part of gardening. Luckily, we don’t do this for a living. And a long time ago we promised ourselves that if gardening turned into work instead of play, we would stop.

From Dry To Wet

            The dry of June has turned into a wet start for July. We sure could have used the water when we were planting. But we’ll take it now. It would be nice if it only rained at night and we only got 1” of rain per week. That would be perfect, and we all know life isn’t perfect. For us, life is pretty good, not perfect – just pretty good.

            Even before the madman was born, his father purchased a small cottage on the shores of a lake nearby. The pessimist would say, “Great, two places to maintain.” But, thanks to Dad’s foresight, we have a cool get-away in a slightly different climate zone. There, space is limited so we garden in boxes. The cottage used to be in a very shady neighborhood. Pine, Oak and Ash provided shade and kept the air cool. Hostas grew great, as did Impatiens and Begonias.

Changes

            But things change as they always do. Cottages changed hands. Small summer places slowly disappeared, replaced by larger year-round houses complete with air conditioning. The trees were no longer needed to cool the air, and a great tree-cutting frenzy took place. Our once shady garden suddenly became a whole lot sunnier. Not quite full sun, but not far.

            We decided to create a cloister garden right outside the back door. Unfortunately, the surface was blacktop, not dirt. We built planting boxes along each side of the asphalt area. For ease of maintenance, we put self-watering containers from Gardener’s Supply Company inside each of the boxes. To complete the closed in look, we strung trellis netting between 8’ tall posts above the boxes. Morning Glories and Moonflowers eventually cover the netting along with any exotic vines that strike the madman’s fancy.

            For the first couple of years, we had outdoor curtain panels behind the netting. But time and wind took a toll on the panels, and we never replaced them. Remember, we like to keep things easy.

Too Much Is No Good

            We do have to be careful with the rain because sometimes the boxes fill up with water. Of course, we discovered this by accident. We went to the lake after a particularly rainy period of time to find that the boxes resembled bogs. Plants dislike too much water as much as they dislike too little water. The madman drilled small drain holes in each box to alleviate this situation. Tipping the boxes to drain the excess water is a small price to pay for the joy we get from sitting in the garden watching the Hummingbirds flit around the garden.

            It’s like having our own little Airbnb. But we never stay for long periods of time because the main gardens at home require maintenance. And we like our home gardens just as much. Besides, that’s where we get our food. Already this year, we have harvested Radishes, Garlic, Salad Greens and Snow Peas. The suicide Tomatoes are starting to produce, and the madman has fished out a few Potatoes for our dinners. Within a couple of days, we’ll add fresh Beans to our menu. Speaking of dinners, we have fresh herbs for flavor and cut flowers for decoration. Besides that, we enjoy watching the birds and butterflies visit the garden.

It Needs Care

            Unfortunately, the garden doesn’t take care of itself, bringing us back to the madman’s July maintenance. Harvesting is the only fun part of maintenance. The madman says that pulling weeds is fun, but I think he’s just deluding himself. Where we can, we mulch instead of weed. But for plants like Squash and Cucumbers, mulch just gives bugs a place to hide. I like to mulch our flower beds to reduce watering and control the weeds. But with the late start we got on planting, we’re still mulching in July.

Weeds Grow

            Every gardener has to weed or pay someone to do it. Weeding can be tricky. We try to disturb the soil as little as possible – there are millions of weed seeds lurking in the soil waiting for the chance to germinate.  If by accident these seeds are brought to the surface, they will be off and running on the freshly disturbed soil. On the other hand, we have to get the weeds out of the garden before seed heads disperse more seeds. Check out our post from June 18, 2019 to see our worst offenders. At one time we would just leave pulled weeds in a pile in the garden path, but we quickly learned that this is not the best idea. All weeds go to a compost pile in the back. Neatness does count in the garden.

            We don’t want weed seeds forming. Nor do we want our vegetable plants to form seeds. We pick to prolong harvests, because if we let our vegetables over ripen, the plants will stop growing. Our flowers and herbs are the same way. This is why we deadhead. Now is the time to get busy with July maintenance.

Avoiding Shutdown

A single dill or fennel plant can produce an awful lot of seeds. But we have found that if we pick the flower heads before they go to seed, we prolong the harvest and make the plants stronger for our caterpillars. Once a plant goes to seed, it shuts down. Of course, once the cucumbers are growing, anyone who wants to make dill pickles will need to use those flowers in the jars – leave enough for that.

Along the same line, annual flowers need to be deadheaded to keep flowering. Remember, a plant’s purpose is to make more plants. My flowers do this by producing seed. If the first flowers go to seed, the plant will think “I’ve done my job, I’m done.” The easiest way to deadhead is to pick bouquets of flowers. Of course, when the cool of September arrives, I can let everything go to seed – I call it planting for the next season. But fall is a long way off.

Water

And then there’s the watering. Through June, we couldn’t buy a rainstorm for our garden. Then as July started, we were getting daily storms of 1-2”. Two days ago, our lake garden received 6” of rain in one afternoon. As we’ve said before, the garden needs 1” of water per week; no more, no less. If Mother Nature doesn’t supply it, we need to. Too bad we can’t put the extra in reserve. So when it doesn’t rain, you will find us in the garden working on the irrigation system or watering by hoses or watering cans. The upside of this is that we get to inspect our plants.

            Not a bad thing to do before sitting down with a cool glass of lemonade.