Mid-Season Heartbreak

The weather these days is really messing with my garden.  Years with nonstop rain, years with little to no rain, years with extreme heat, years with surprise late season frosts...I can't seem to win.  

This year is one lacking water.  Being on a private well that supports two households and (per the well drilling company consultation) has more than likely run its course, in times like these rationing water becomes very important.  I'm still not set up to use the IBC tote, and the pump we used to access the cistern water in the well has been nothing but a frustration, so I'm relegated to using a hose run from the mule barn across the driveway to the hillside garden.  At first I was only watering vegetables, perennials in raised beds, and newly transplanted plants in addition to regular household use.  Then I backed it down to vegetables and newly transplanted, and lately I've been only watering vegetables.  I'm beginning to pick and choose which vegetables really need water now.  I've pulled some of the garlic and the bulbs are about half the size they really should be.  My onions are giving up the ghost, and they're more like cocktail onion sized.  

The potatoes are looking awful.  I lifted the flap on one bag and dug around to see if I could find anything, and all I pulled out was a shriveled seed potato.  I didn't dig too deeply, so maybe that's just a one off.  

 

The shallots, on the other hand, are doing phenomenally well.  I have one the size of a baseball, which isn't normal.  I honestly believe it's the hugelkultur environment they're growing in; it's said that after a time these beds become almost self watering due to the slowly decomposing materials at the bottom being more water retentive than plain old soil.  This is year 4 since the creation of this container bed, and it must be making some amazing soil at this point.  The hugelkultur container up near the house (where the onions are growing this year) is only 2 years old, and needs consistent watering.

In the polytunnel, the tomatoes were doing fantastically well.  That is, until the record breaking heat wave hit and I didn't water them enough.  I was plagued with blossom end rot, the result of inconsistent watering and lack of calcium.  I picked off all the affected fruit and gave the plants a good feed, and have been watering them regularly.  The result was an infestation of tomato hornworms, which have nearly denuded three plants and eaten much of what decent fruit remained.  

The corn has been loving the heat, but I'm not sure it was planted in time to actually generate a harvest.  I noticed today that some of the cornstalks are forming tassels, which is most likely due to stress.  I have been banking on the extended growing season we seem to experience nowadays; warmer weather lasts into the autumn and frosts seem to come later each year.  I'm sure this assumption will come to bite me in the ass at some point.

 I've moved most of the perennial plants out of the holding beds, so next year I should be able to use them for vegetables.  All of the beds need a good dose of compost and fresh soil this autumn.  Once I've pulled the corn, I may try growing field peas in the cinder block bed.  Peas are a nitrogen fixer, and will add back nutrients that this years plants used up.  

The cottage garden beds in front of the hillside garden are beginning to take hold.  I need to steel myself against adding any more plants at this point, so it doesn't get too crowded.  I need to fix the leaning fence, and I'm planning to add a good layer of 50/50 soil/compost and a thick layer of bark mulch this fall to protect the new plants over winter.  Right now the entire spot encompassing the hillside and cottage gardens is more like orchestrated chaos.  

In the backyard, once again I've discovered too late a sawfly infestation on my yellow twig dogwood shrub.  Like my tomato plants, it's been stripped of leaves.

 

 

The even worse news is that they have somehow found their way to the Midwinter Fire Dogwood shrubs around the front of the house.  I'll try some neem oil spray and see if that can knock them down before they strip more leaves.

But it's not all doom and gloom.  The wildflower meadow continues to throw out some decent color, even if you have to look for it.  A gorgeous buck has presented himself a few nights now, and is a marvel to behold.  The crows have begun to bring their fledgling brood to the cat food feast, and are now a healthy murder of six.  The old turkey hen has three little chicks.  And since it's taken me a few days to put this post together, the weather has taken a turn for the merciful and we're actually getting a slow, soft rain over the next few days.  Just enough to ease water woes and give everything a nice boost.  Life goes on.