After spending a long holiday weekend at the Bay, the garden was in pretty sad shape when I returned. I had asked several people to water while I was away but who knows if anyone got around to it. Temperatures in the low 100's didn't help either. Most of the bean foliage was fried, the cucumbers shriveled beyond recognition, and the remaining beets wilted to a stringy pink mess.
The situation forced me to make some tough decisions about the beans. We had already eaten quite a few, they were taking up most of the plot, and at this point they looked horrible. So into the compost they went. I spared two plants off to the left. After mulching and giving everything a loooong drink, the plot looked a little more respectable. I trimmed off the dead beet greens and pulled a few of the larger ones for dinner. I also planted three salvia plants between the marigolds to the right side of the plot and added two musk melon plants by the carrots. I put in two escarole plants behind the large marigold row in the front hoping to take advantage of mid-day shade. All of these plants were abandoned and left to die on the picnic table in the garden. I was happy to try some new things.
My hope is that with the beans gone, the eggplant will get more light, water, and soil and grow big and strong and make a huge crop of eggplants. I would settle for just one eggplant. So far the blossoms have all fallen or been knocked off before anything has had a chance to happen.
The pepper seems totally fine. It's the healthiest in the plot and making a few new peppers which I plan to leave on the plant until they ripen to red.
Yesterday the first red sunflower began to open. You can see the big yellow guys in the background already drying out post bloom and preparing their tasty seed crop. This has all happened much earlier this year. I may be pulling the sunflowers in August at this rate.
Today the first red sunflower bloomed. I noticed it is still a favorite to the local honeybee population.
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