May 1 Overview

As the peak gardening season begins in other parts of the country, it's winding down here. I removed the last of the broccoli and cilantro yesterday, and planted another melon in their place. I've stopped harvesting asparagus and let the ferns grow to provide food to sustain the plant for next year's crop. Very few lemons remain on the tree, the first flush of rose blooms have come and gone, and nasturtiums and petunias are pretty scraggly looking. In their place, zinnias, marigolds, alyssum, coreopsis, and galliardia are appearing. Hollyhocks are still going strong, and sweet potato vines are spreading into the streambed and the floor of the gazebo,

I harvested the first of the green beans, tomatoes, and eggplant this week, and should be picking yellow squash in another week. I've picked the half-dozen apricots our young tree produced, along with about two dozen smallish peaches. The remaining ones are even smaller, so I think I'll let the birds enjoy them. There are about a half-dozen green plums on our Santa Rosa plum, which is somewhat of an improvement over most years, and dozens of developing Asian pears. The apple tree is, surprisingly, still alive, but unlikely to produce any fruit.

The black metal structure in the upper left is the framework for one of our two portable gazebos that we use to shade the side patio in summer. We have to take down the canopy when the wind kicks up, as it has been doing for the past week. One of our future projects will be to replace these with a permanent pergola, which should be more functional, attractive, and stable.

Plants that grow well in the heat (2)

This is gaillardia, or blanket flower, which is in the sunflower family. It reseeds easily and will come up every summer, producing loads of colorful blossoms in shades of maroon and gold. (ASU colors!) Once the petals drop off, puffy round balls remain which are rather attractive by themselves and will eventually become dandelion-like clusters of windblown seeds. It doesn't wilt, even on the hottest days, and will bloom until we get a fairly heavy frost.

I managed to do about five minutes of weeding around the perimeter of this bed today. Bermuda grass also thrives in the heat! I also completed step two of this year's sweet-potato growing experiment, which thankfully is an inside job. I love sweet potatoes, and they supposedly do well in our summer heat.