Late July Garden Ramblings

 A quick catch up on how things are going at the end of July. 

It started off pretty wet and cool, but finally, we got heat. Lots of heat and sunshine. Everything has perked right up and is either looking great, or on it's way to looking great.

The flowers are now brightening my days and feeding the bees and beneficial insects. 

The veggies are growing, flowering, fruiting, doing whatever they are supposed to be doing. So grateful that the tomatoes and peppers perked up and are now thriving. With the cost of groceries nowadays, the more we can grow, the better! We hope to have a lot to can at the end of the season. 

The Romeo sour cherry tree is loaded with tart little cherries. Almost ripe enough for us to make into a tart cherry juice (costs $10 a bottle at the grocers, so is well worth our while to make ourselves). 

We have one of those stainless steel juicers so we can make our own organic cherry juice, apple juice, raspberry, blackberry.... whatever fruits we grow (or buy in bulk), we can juice. 

We ended up with 6.5 pint jars of tart cherry juice from our two year old Carmine Jewel cherry tree. 

A little bit of tart cherry juice in your chamomile tea in the evening will have you sleeping like a baby. You can use a bit of maple syrup to sweeten it, if you like, as it is very tart... but crazy me, I like it that way. It is also said to help alleviate joint pain and inflammation. 

 Tomatoes, in the greenhouse, are fruiting and flowering, growing like mad. 

Cucumbers got crazy out of hand before we were able to get the strings all set up for them. This year has been a wild, busy, and heavy ride. While hubby is now well on his way to recovery from his esophageal cancer, it has been a whole lot. Things are finally normalising : )  

End of July and the greenhouse is already a jungle. Eek. 

Hmm... why are there two different colours on this one coneflower plant? 

Peppers are 'peppering'! I was concerned when I first put them out there. They were tiny! Smallest starts I have ever started with as it was just so cold and wet this spring/early summer. 

I gave them a shot of this organic kelp, once a week, and they just started growing like mad. It helped that the sun and heat finally came to the prairies, too. 

I use that same fertiliser above on my tomatoes, if they are not ripening in the heat. 

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Growing peppers and eggplants in pots, this year. They are sitting in garden bed on the south side of the house for tons of sunshine and heat. 

It has been such a smoky couple of weeks. Bro says it is fog, maybe smog? Not sure what it is but it burns off by 11 ish and then gets smokin' hot. 

Berkie is enjoying the cool mornings on the patio. She then is inside from about 11 till 4, during the hottest part of the day. 

Happy August Long Weekend. 

I am off to harvest my garlic and onions ~ Tanja