What's Peaking in Mid-July

Two cherry tomato plants (Sun Gold and Sweet Million)
are producing a bowlful per day. We've begun bartering them for eggs
with a neighbor.

The new butterfly garden looks lovely,
with a nameless salvia, crocosmia and coneflower,
but I've seen perhaps two butterflies there. Lots of bees, though. 

Cosmos in the parsley

It rained nearly every afternoon for what seemed like weeks.

The cucumber trellised itself on the cherry tomato plant.

This brown thrasher spent several minutes rubbing its belly
and preening on the top of the Prius. 

This bunny thinks he owns the garden. He's been eating coneflowers,
coreopsis and on the plus side, Johnson grass. 

Crepe myrtles are peaking.

A small milkweed bug on the butterfly weed.

I can't decide if this combination of two unusual kinds of coleus
and basket grass is creatively inspired or hideous. 

Local Tomatoes, Bread and Homemade Beebalm Tea

Summers in North Carolina bring both laments and blessings. This week, the main topic of conversation was the extreme heat (104 degrees on Friday). But the heat didn't stop the cherry tomatoes from continuing to produce, or keep the farmers from the market Saturday. With pleasure this evening, we realized our entire meal was made of locally produced food. 

The salad includes cherry tomatoes we grew, plus tomatoes, green beans, eggplant, cucumber and red onion from the farmer's market. The tomatoes, beans and onion were so full of flavor that we didn't need a salad dressing. The bread was made by a man who buys organic whole wheat from local farmers. He bakes the bread in a wood-fired oven in his dining room and even splits his own wood. He hauls his loaves of bread to market on a cart towed behind his bike. The bread not only has a low carbon footprint, but is delicious. (Some day I'll write a post on the Carrboro Farmer's Market. It's one of the treats of living in this community, having access to tasty local produce, all grown within 50 miles of Carrboro.)

I am proud of the iced tea, my first attempt ever at homemade tea. I've read many times that the Indians used to make tea from beebalm leaves, but never got around to making any until this year. Since the beebalm patch is outgrowing its bounds, I was able to combine harvesting with weeding. A brief Google search turned up a recipe that was ridiculously easy.

• Strip leaves from monarda right before or right after bloom.
• Lay leaves flat to dry for three days.
• Crumble leaves.

Here is how the leaves looked after three days.

Since our summers are so humid, the leaves didn't dry completely, so I put them in the oven on low temperature for about 10 minutes. It was fun to crumble them. It's hard to describe the taste of the tea - it's fragrant with a mild, refreshing taste.

I'd love to hear about teas you've made from plants in your garden. Now that I know how easy it is, I'm inspired to make more herbal teas. 

July: What's in Bloom

One of these months, I will manage to put together a post on what's blooming in my garden in time for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. This time, I was distracted by fawns. Also, July is not a particularly good month for blooms in the South, especially in a shady garden. But I do have a few plants to show you. Pineapple lily (Eucomis comosa 'Sparkling Burgundy') is one of the more exotic plants in my garden, with large purplish-green, sword-shaped leaves.

The bloom is just emerging - I don't think it looks like a pineapple, but it is interesting. The plant takes no special care, despite its exotic looks.

The cherry tomatoes are getting close to ripening. I didn't get them in the ground until mid-May this year, so it's been a struggle to resist temptation to buy them at the farmer's market. But I know that soon will come the time when we have bowls overflowing with yellow (Sun Gold) and red (Sweet Million) cherry tomatoes. 

If I had to choose a favorite annual for pots, it might be torenia. It grows well in part shade and has inviting tubular flowers. A local nursery was kind enough to order six-packs of torenia after I inquired about it. Ruby-throated hummingbirds visit it.

Ruby-throated hummingbirds also like Salvia guaranitica. When I was photographing the salvia yesterday evening, I heard the familiar whir as one came to dine, then zipped off, perhaps startled by my presence at its one of its favorite hangouts. (As far as I can tell, ruby-throated hummingbirds could care less about the myth that they are particularly attracted to scarlet flowers. In my garden, they visit white phlox, pink impatiens, purple and pink torenia, and blue salvia as well as red monarda.)

Here is a rudbeckia hirta that seeded itself in the vegetable garden. I'm glad I didn't pull it out.

Here is something else seated in the vegetable garden. The little rabbit is getting bold.  After he ate all the beans off the bush plants while we were in the mountains, I made a deal. The bunny can have the rest of the bush beans. I get the pole beans. However, the next day, the bunny violated the peace accord by biting off several of the pole bean vines. And today, here he is, caught in the act of blithely munching on the bush beans. He kept right on munching though I was only two feet away. Clearly, he knows I have a soft heart.

Some garden surprises, like finding wilting pole beans irrevocably severed from their roots, are not so good. But I usually find more pleasant surprises in the garden. This year, a favorite surprise has been this patch of zinnias (Lilliput) that self-seeded themselves after I didn't deadhead last year's planting. (Why do so many garden writers recommend deadheading?!) I like the smaller flower heads of these zinnias.

Butterflies usually flock to Joe Pye weed, which is just starting to bloom in the sunny bed along the street. This is a dwarf variety that grew to 7 feet tall last year, ignoring the write-up that said it was supposed to be 4 feet tall. This year it's about 4 feet tall. Plants have minds of their own.

If you live in the South, please excuse the next photo. Crape myrtles are overplanted by commercial landscapers in mono-color rows along most roads and shopping centers, which has the unfortunate effect of numbing me to their beauty. But I think this specimen looks lovely in our wooded back garden. It has been blooming well the last couple of years, ever since I removed the black landscaping plastic that I discovered a previous "gardener" had placed around its base (and most everywhere else in the yard). That's a subject for another post!

Finally, a gardenia that looked earlier this spring like it was yellowing and dying has now greened up and is showing occasional blooms. I believe it's August Beauty. 

I hope you enjoyed the tour. I am dreaming of cooler weather and non-baked out cottage gardens! I hope to get to Maine in August.

Veggie Gardening in Part Sun

You can grow many edibles in part sun. It took me years to figure this out -as a new gardener, I devoured the articles in gardening magazines and diligently followed whatever the experts said. I would read about heirloom lettuce or how to grow beans, and in my imagination, I was already cutting “claret-splashed, bright green” lettuce leaves and serving tender steamed heirloom green beans. My fantasies burst with the inevitable words: “needs full sun.” The sunniest part of our yard gets direct sun from noon to 3 p.m., well short of the six hours of sunlight called full sun.

The woodland vegetable garden

Cherry tomatoes, planted last week.

Like many people who live in older neighborhoods with established trees, full sun is a dream. You don’t get much sunlight when your house is surrounded on all sides by 50- to 60-foot-tall trees. But my husband wanted a vegetable garden, and two years ago, we stopped listening to the experts. We dug up an oval-shaped patch of weedy “lawn” in a clearing on the south side of the house, added lots of compost to improve the clay, and began experimenting.

Probably the biggest surprise was that cherry tomatoes do quite well in part sun in our North Carolina garden. We’ve grown “Sun Gold” and “Sweet Million,” both of which produced so prolifically that we had extras to give to neighbors. Last year I tried Roma tomatoes, which ripened into several batches of tomato sauce.

Free bamboo makes nice tepees for pole beans.

The general rule seems to be that plants that flower and grow large “fruit,” such as large tomatoes, squash, cucumber, melons, etc. do require full sun. But we’ve had success with smaller vegetables such as peas and bush beans. This year, we’re trying two different varieties of pole beans.

Greens thrive in part sun in our Zone 7B garden. Swiss chard has become my favorite green. It’s beautiful, with its bright red, yellow or orange stems and survives both summer heat and winter cold. If you cut only the largest leaves, it will produce for months. We plant collards and kale in the fall.  Although they stop growing during the shortest days, they survive brief periods of snow cover and are ready for harvest by March. I almost forgot the lettuce - I think it may prefer part shade in the South.

Parsley

Last, but not least, many herbs do well in part shade. I don’t know what we’d do without them – they’re especially valuable as flavor because my husband is on a low-sodium diet. We use them in almost every meal except breakfast. Parsley and oregano thrive with almost no care. Even with almost daily use, our two parsley plants grow faster than we can cut them. Our basil plants grew four feet tall last summer. Rosemary also has grown well in part shade. I just planted thyme and tarragon and look forward to seeing how they do.

One thing I know: I’m having a lot more fun as a gardener (and eating better!) since I started experimenting with the vegetable garden.