Everything in my summer garden seemed so promising in May.
The zucchini plants were spreading and budding -
The squash plants had big beautiful blooms -
The passion fruit vines were flowering and already had a few fruit -
My Red-Flame and Thompson Seedless grape vines had survived the bout of powdery mildew and were loaded with their first year grape clusters.
My carefully selected tomato starts that I grew from seed indoors, of varieties that I knew would produce here in the desert - Super Souix, Pineapple tomato, Stupice, Cossack Pineapple Tomatillos, and Cuastralee Beefsteak tomatoes had hardened off well and were starting to set fruit.
Though quite ugly and hogging up space, my volunteer Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes were constantly producing.
But as the heat of summer set in, the bugs and countless other critters came out, and they behaved as though they were simultaneously starving and dying of thirst. Anything containing moisture got eaten. The grapes seem to be abducted by aliens overnight - they were small low-flying creatures with feathers, remarkably similar to what we here on earth call "birds".
We tried everything possible to keep the alien birds from our tomato bounty - scare tape, bird netting, taffeta bags, jingling wind chimes, the fake owl, surly looking garden gnomes and even the neighbors cat. Nothing worked.
To add to the agony, by June the tomato plants started suffering from curly top virus. So one by one they were removed in a futile effort to thwart the spread of the disease. My pepper plants in a nearby bed produced nothing but little mutant peppers. I now know it was likely due to the curly top virus, likely spread to my peppers by beet leafhoppers (left here by the aliens who abducted my grapes).
Yields were extremely low from all the summer veggies I planted - cucumbers, zucchini, squash, okra, peppers, and tomatoes. I'm still holding out hope for the watermelon and eggplants. The passion fruit vines, with over 40 blooms only produced 3 fruit! The acerola cherry bloomed and bloomed and is still blooming but has never set fruit. One would think that I didn't have enough pollinator-attracting plants, but that wasn't the case. The garden is still full of flowering basil, wild sunflowers, borage, lantana, and in early summer had blooming citrus buzzing loudly with bees, nasturtium vines, bee balm, calendula, marigold and hollyhocks.
So, as in life, things don't always go as planned and we must look at the positive side of things. My garden successes were that all of my young fruit trees survived the summer - peaches, apples, plums, mandarin orange, bearrs lime, and mulberries. The pomegranate has a ton of fruit. Other successes were -
My bee balm plants were gorgeous!
My 3 year old lavender bush bloomed for the first time!
My Red Chard lasted well into July, protected by big bushes of basil, peanut plants, and a few okra stalks.
My Moringa trees are doing great, producing tons of pods to eat, and more leaves than I can ever consume.
My sweet potato vines and malabar spinach are sprawling out everywhere, providing lots of leafy greens for salads.
While being trapped inside because of the sweltering heat, my wild sunflower jungle has provided us with endless hours of entertainment watching the goldfinches feeding on the seeds.
Now that is one happy bird!
So what have I learned from my summer garden debacle? That it's just too dam hot in the summer for me to properly tend to so many plants. Even with my night owl, Bugzooka-carrying brother patrolling the garden late into the wee hours. Next summer I will stick with easy heat-loving plants that need little attention such as sweet potatoes, malabar spinach, egyptian spinach, and okra. My focus will be on my fruit trees, herbs, and vines, and just a few hardy perennials like artichokes, tree collards, and gherkin cucumbers.
