What Did You Do In The Garden?

Watered. All I had time for around the patio. Mulched the new flower beds by the coop, and put in two more large stepping stones by the coop yard door, to match the two I put in front of the coop last week.

Every little bit helps!!! We are in the middle of our "garden marathons" and that is where gardeners start to give up. Pat yourself on the back and call yesterday a success!!

weeding strawberry patch, almost done, very finicky as some of the weeds are grasses starting that show up as only very fine threads and i have to look under each leave.

put up more dill pickles.

cooler today thank goodness.

hope everyone has a good day out there...

Added more string to various flower trellises.

Pulled down and pulled up some of the pea trellis and vines. Planted ... ... cilantro.

Some of the peas are being saved for seed. Usually, I'm trying to get the peas out about a week earlier than this so green beans can be planted. What to do now with the patch of bare ground? Hoping the cilantro can take off for salsa ... when there are plenty of ripe tomatoes!

I have tried this before with sowing cilantro seed in the sweet corn. That's worked okay and hasn't worked very well. Thought that the shade from the maturing corn plants might help before the corn harvest and they are cut down. Cilantro was very small last year. Right now, the seedlings will have zero shade. If, there are any cilantro seedlings ...

What is in the sweet corn? Some recently-transplanted cucumbers . Might be too late but trying. After the mature pea seed is harvested. Might just leave that section of the trellis up and plant more peas! That late July effort has been consistently successful ... enuf.

Steve

@digitS'

it gets pretty hot here for some weeks yet so to me it seems that planting peas would not get very far? yet, i also admit that i rarely even attempt it at this time of the season because i'm so busy with other things. i did get a very nice harvest from my first planting and that is enough.

would cilantro work as a cover crop this late in the season or does it start too slow?
do deer eat it?

the deer have trampled and eaten most of the buckwheat i have growing - it is a good cover crop but it has to be protected and i can't do that where it is planted. as much as i'd like to put more seeds down i don't want to waste them or attract even more deer activity to that garden.

today i was able to weed around the edges of that north garden for the first time since i cleared it out. much easier now with everything else out of the way. in a few hours i could take care of a few hundred square feet and get almost all of the edge finely weeded. i ran into a small patch of a very fine wispy ground cover growing in the creeping thyme. i had to spend about a half hour getting it out of there and will have to keep an eye on that spot because i surely do not want it to spread. i was tempted to take a shovel to that area and lift that whole section out to make sure it could not spread, but i decided i did not want to damage it as it looked pretty nice and filled in.

i should look up that plant now and see if i can find it. no luck, will have to ask the experts. in another thread...

@flowerbug , I don't know about deer and cilantro.

It's a question as to whether it will do okay. The timing has been out of frustration to have this springtime crop as a necessary ingredient for late summer salsa. It's a common complaint. The last few years lati cilantro been a small crop for us.

I have harvested snow peas that were covered with frost! Different times are "the hottest" on average in different locations. Here, it's the very last days of July. The vines are much shorter and when fall frost comes, that's it! It doesn't kill the peas but growth ceases, or nearly so.

Steve

digitS' said:

@flowerbug , I don't know about deer and cilantro.

It's a question as to whether it will do okay. The timing has been out of frustration to have this springtime crop as a necessary ingredient for late summer salsa. It's a common complaint. The last few years lati cilantro been a small crop for us.

I have harvested snow peas that were covered with frost! Different times are "the hottest" on average in different locations. Here, it's the very last days of July. The vines are much shorter and when fall frost comes, that's it! It doesn't kill the peas but growth ceases, or nearly so.

Steve

Click to expand...

i have never seen cilantro dehydrated but perhaps that is because i never look for it and am not much of a shopper... would it work that way?

yes, i've had smaller crops from them in the later season when i have tried that out. since i've gone bean crazy i have plenty enough going on later in the summer/fall that i don't want to spend a lot of energy on a crop which may not produce that much.

i already think this season is going to be extra challenging for me because of all the fresh eating beans i planted that i hope to sample for flavor and try to take notes on and such. starting to see some little beans here or there.

flowerbug said:

i have never seen cilantro dehydrated but perhaps that is because i never look for it and am not much of a shopper... would it work that way?

Click to expand...

I've dehydrated cilantro. It's not the same as fresh but what is? It works. it's pretty fine so it doesn't take that long to dry out, basil or oregano take longer.

I also save coriander seeds. I let the seeds mature on the plant and then store the plant is a ventilated brown paper bag. After they get very dry I harvest the seeds. If you leave the plant in the garden to let the seeds mature I can get volunteers but I plant the seeds in the ground where I want them. Volunteers can be transplanted. Or you can start them inside.

Technically the plant is called coriander. The seeds are coriander spice. But if you use the leaves as an herb, it is called cilantro. But when I'm talking to other people I usually just call the plant cilantro, that seems to avoid confusion and explanations.

@digitS' this is another herb that if I keep cutting it back to the ground and don't let it go to seed it keeps growing, though it does not like hot dry weather. Partial shade may not be a bad idea, I haven't done that, but pretty sure you'd need to water regularly.

I'm up in Vancouver WA visiting my DD and family. I string trimmed both lawns, cut back overgrown bushes out front (to which DD got miffed that now the neighbors can see if they have stuff on the porch - Will it grow back???), trimmed four roses down to about two feet (they were fully overgrown, about 5' tall and tons of dead canes and disease), trimmed a lot of bushes out back, uncovered a rhodie that was hidden, and picked up so much dog poop.......

SIL finally mowed the grass out back. It was a foot tall! They live on a 5000 sq ft lot but it still takes effort to keep things tidy.

The nicest cilantro are the plants that overwinter but ...

then we are months from ripe tomatoes!

I've wondered if it could be stored properly in the freezer. Neither frozen nor dried would fit well with the way DW makes salsa. Oh, salsa can be frozen!

Steve