Blessing moon garden

“That beautiful season the Summer!

Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light and the landscape

Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.”

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

July weather brings blessings of the sacred marriage of earth and sky, of dark and light, of the King and Queen of summer. Warm temperatures bring a respite to the pace of earlier efforts in the garden. I want to make certain that plants have adequate water, particularly during bouts of consecutive hot and dry days. I try to water in the morning, or at least a couple of hours before sunset. Unless the sky really opens up with a strong downpour, I try to water deeply, putting down at least an inch of water per week. The other ongoing task in July is to keep the weeds down, so they don’t get a chance to go to seed and reemerge in their hundreds.

Mulch becomes a saving grace in the heat, protecting soft greenery from shock and wilt by cooling the soil and holding moisture. It also helps to slow the rush of weeds that keep trying to overtake any stray rays of light, ahead of more desired neighbors. Free nitrogen, the most needed nutrient in the garden, is as close at hand as lawn clippings, which make wonderful mulch. I deadhead my spent flowers to keep them neat and blooming on through the summer. I’ll divide any thickened clumps of iris, and plant them out separately, later in the month. Every two weeks, or so, I apply a side dressing fertilizer of manure and seaweed tea. If it is very dry, I will wait on fertilizing, until there is an expected rain to help move added nutrients down into the soil. Bush beans fix nitrogen in root nodules, and will help to naturally feed a companion crop of Swiss chard.

Vine varieties of pole beans, morning glories and thunbergia are climbing vees of twine, forming a green curtain on the northern end of the garden. In front of them, squash and watermelon are interspersed with sunflowers. I put in successive crops of lettuce, as we harvest earlier tender mixes. I have rushed to set in two new beds planted with red cabbage, and the Italian dark-leafed Tuscany kale. Feathery stalks of first-season asparagus are offset by inter-plantings of colorful and fragrant lilies. I love the effect of flowers popping out amid vegetable plantings. So, I have five different varieties of cosmos peppered between runs of tiger’s eye bush beans, hillbilly flame tomatoes and bibb lettuce.

Harvesting of Easter egg and French breakfast radishes has allowed parmax carrots planted in between them to flourish, spreading their fronds. I will plant under the carrots with some more lettuce. Sugar snap peas keep coming, and big daddy pea pods are fattening right behind them. Some late-seeded curly parsley is poking up, along side of the white-blossomed and beautiful Mt. Fuji campanula.

A few nights ago, a vigorous wind, rain and lightning show knocked down two huge apple blossom amaryllis flowers, which now grace a bowl on the kitchen table. Summer appeared in the next few days. Yellowtail butterflies are landing on the daylilies. Hummingbird moths are nosing in purple petunias. Sam Keen describes the season best: “ ...summer is when laziness finds respectability.”