Here in the Northeast, temperatures today are expected to hit the mid 80s - a little break following this week's humid heat wave.
Despite the uncomfortable summer weather, the growing vegetables at my farm are thriving. The artichokes, eggplants, peppers, onions, carrots, and beans, etc. are all doing so well. With a garden this large, it's important to check it every day and keep up with its care.
Here are the latest photos, enjoy.
My gardeners and I have been spending a lot of time in this large half-acre space. In order to have delicious, beautiful vegetables, it’s important to always check on what’s doing well and remove what is not and then replant when needed. This garden has been so productive and all the vegetables look fantastic.
My tomatoes are growing beautifully, and every single plant is well-supported.
I grow an abundance of tomatoes to share and to make all the delicious tomato sauce I enjoy through the year. It’s a good idea to grow a range of varieties, including at least one or two disease-resistant types.
I prefer to pick eggplants early when they are young and tender. Picking early will encourage the plant to grow more, and will help to extend the growing season. These eggplants will be harvested soon.
Sweet bell peppers are popular in the garden – all grassy in flavor and super-crunchy in texture. I love making stuffed peppers – so easy and so delicious. It won’t be long before I’ll have a bounty of green, red, and yellow peppers.
My crew loves hot peppers, and I grow many of them to share. If growing both sweet and hot peppers, be careful when picking – keep the hot ones separated from the sweet, so there is no surprise in the kitchen.
And look at my onions. I’ve picked a few already and they’re excellent this year. I plant a lot of white, yellow and red onions.
These red onions will be ready soon and can be harvested on a dry day. After picking, they’ll be placed in a warm, dry area where they can cure.
This bed was planted with bush beans. My head gardener, Ryan McCallister, always keeps track of when to plant our crops and we always plant in succession, meaning we plant seeds every few weeks, so there is always something ready to harvest.
All the cucumbers are growing in the center of the garden along the fence-trellis. Cucumbers require a long growing season, and most are ready for harvest in 50 to 70 days from planting. The fruits ripen at different times on the vine, but it is essential to pick them when they are ready. If they are left on the vine too long, they tend to taste bitter.
Nearby is my bed of basil – both green and purple. Basil, also called great basil, is a culinary herb of the family Lamiaceae. Basil is native to tropical regions from central Africa to Southeast Asia. It is a tender plant, and is used in many cuisines. Since basil grows in tropical climates, it grows well in hot weather, and this season, we’ve had lots of it.
Globe artichokes, Cynara scolymus, are popular in both Europe and the United States. Artichokes are actually the flower buds, which emerge from the center of the plants.
The tomatillo, also known as the Mexican husk tomato, is a plant of the nightshade family bearing small, spherical, and green fruit.
These are birds beak peppers – they need a little more time. Birds beak peppers, also known as Pimenta Biquinho, are small, round peppers with a tapered tip that resembles a bird’s beak. They originated in Brazil and are known for their tangy, fruity flavor and mild heat level. Birds beak peppers can be eaten raw or used as a garnish – I like to pickle them.
This is sage. Salvia officinalis – a perennial, evergreen subshrub, with woody stems, grayish leaves, and blue to purplish flowers. It is a member of the mint family Lamiaceae and native to the Mediterranean region. It is popular in fall and winter cooking and baking.
Ryan occasionally picks a vegetable to see how it is doing. Here’s one of my carrots – looks really good! Most are familiar with the orange carrots, but they also grow in red, yellow, white, and purple.
In another bed – young Swiss chard. Swiss chard is a leafy green vegetable often used in Mediterranean cooking. The leaf stalks are large and vary in color, usually white, yellow, or red. The leaf blade can be green or reddish in color. Harvest Swiss chard when the leaves are tender and big enough to eat.
And remember my asparagus bed? After picking the last of the season’s stalks, it’s important to allow the fern-like foliage to grow through the remainder of the season. The foliage makes carbohydrates and sugars that get stored in the plant’s roots and crowns to help generate next year’s crop.
Everyone always asks what I do with all the vegetables I grow. I share them with my family, but I also share the bounties with friends, colleagues, and my hardworking crew here at the farm. I also provide fruits, vegetables, and eggs for photography and video shoots. And, of course, all my birds get vegetables too.
Across from my long and winding pergola is my Stewartia garden - it, too, is looking so beautiful this time of year.
My Stewartia Garden was once planted with rows and rows of ferns and lilies. Now, the garden still has growing tiger lilies and ferns, but it is also filled with lush Stewartia trees, Japanese maples, Cotinus, and thriving plants including Epimediums, Syneilesis, hostas, and more. It's matured so nicely over the last few years.
Here are some photos of this garden in summer, enjoy.
Many of the plantings in this garden behind my Tenant House are under the cover of the towering bald cypress. And right now, this garden is also dotted with gorgeous bright orange tiger lilies.
Earlier this year I planted a border of boxwood. I decided the space would look so pretty matching the boxwood across the carriage road along my winding pergola. Boxwood can grow in full sun and partial shade – they’ll thrive in this location.
Some of the ferns in this area include the Japanese painted ferns – beautiful mounds of dramatic foliage with luminescent blue-green fronds and dark central ribs that fade to silver at the edges.
Heuchera is a genus of largely evergreen perennial plants in the family Saxifragaceae, all native to North America. Common names include alumroot and coral bells.
Hostas have easy care requirements which make them ideal for many gardens. Hosta is a genus of plants commonly known as hostas, plantain lilies and occasionally by the Japanese name, giboshi. They are native to northeast Asia and include hundreds of different cultivars.
The hostas are so lush with their varying leaf shapes, sizes, and textures. I also have a large hosta garden down behind my chicken yard.
Lady’s mantle, Alchemilla vulgaris, grows along one edge. It is a clumping perennial which typically forms a mound of long-stalked, circular, scallop-edge light green leaves, with tiny, star-shaped, chartreuse flowers.
In another area, the bright red berries of the Viburnum. These berries replace the creamy-white, flat-headed flowers that bloom in spring.
Cotinus, the smoketree, or smoke bush, is a genus of two species of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae, closely related to sumacs. The simple, oval shaped leaves range from deep purple and red to bright green. They offer such a colorful display throughout the seasons.
I have many Japanese maples at the farm. With more than a thousand varieties and cultivars, the iconic Japanese maple tree is among the most versatile small trees for use in the landscape. Some of the Japanese maples in this garden include Acer palmatum var. dissectum ‘Crimson Queen’, Acer palmatum ‘Shaina’, and Acer palmatum var. dissectum ‘Red Dragon’.
This is Syneilesis palmata. Over time, these plants form a sizeable patch of green umbrella-shaped leaves. Mature foliage can be more than a foot across with deeply toothed, narrow leaves – it is really an interesting plant.
Epimediums are long-lived and easy to grow and have such attractive and varying foliage. Epimedium, also known as barrenwort, bishop’s hat, and horny goat weed, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Berberidaceae.
And this is Asarum europaeum, or European Wild Ginger – a slowly spreading ground cover that is primarily grown for its glossy, leathery, heart-shaped, dark green leaves.
I planted the bald cypress when they were just a few feet tall, but look at them now! Bald cypress or Taxodium distichum is a deciduous conifer. Though the bald cypress is native to swampy areas, it is also able to withstand dry, sunny weather and is hardy in USDA climate zones 5 through 10.
The bark of the bald cypress is brown to gray and forms long scaly, fibrous ridges on the trunk. Over time, these ridges tend to peel off the trunk in strips.
The phlox is thriving in the garden. Phlox has superb heat and mildew resistance. It comes in a range of colors from pink to pure white to lavender to even red and grows happily in most parts of the country. If properly planted and sited, phlox is largely pest and disease free too – a perfect perennial.
This is a balloon flower, Platycodon grandiflorus – a species of herbaceous flowering perennial plant of the family Campanulaceae, and the only member of the genus Platycodon. It is native to East Asia and is also known as the Chinese bellflower or platycodon.
Balloon flowers get their name from the unopened buds, which swell up prior to opening and resemble little hot-air balloons.
I have several Cotoneaster plants in one corner of the garden bed. They have soft arching stems studded with leathery, glossy, rounded, dark green leaves.
Cotoneaster is a vigorous, dense, and evergreen shrub. These plants work well for low hedges.
And this is my Basket House, nestled under the shade of the bald cypress at the edge of the carriage road to my home. The weather has been extremely warm and humid, and today is expected to be another hot one with temperatures in the 90s. It’s been challenging to keep all the gardens well-watered, but these perennials seem to be doing just fine.
It's definitely mid-summer when my long and winding pergola is full of striking orange-colored tiger lily blooms.
This pergola, located on one side of a carriage road near my Tenant House, goes through several transformations during the year. In winter, the beds are bare and the bordering boxwood is enveloped in protective burlap. In late spring, a palette of bold purple alliums and blue camassia cover the area, followed by the delicate shades of lavender from the flowering clematis vines that wrap around each of the antique granite posts. And now, hundreds of brightly spotted tiger lilies line the garden bed - and they're thriving.
Enjoy these photos.
Tiger lilies, Lilium lancifolium, bloom in mid to late summer, are easy to grow, and come back year after year.
Native to China and Japan, these robust flowers add striking beauty to any border with their bright and showy orange colored blooms.
In winter, my pergola is sleeping – the boxwood border is covered in burlap and the beds are bare.
And this year, I restored the winding 300-foot pergola and replaced the 20-year old timeworn wood with new beams and cedar rafter tails.
By late May, this pergola garden is filled with lots of blue and purple flowers. This palette of colors is a big favorite at the farm – it grows more colorful and vibrant every spring.
The beds are filled with Camassia, Hyacinthoides or Spanish bluebells…
… And bright, big alliums.
And now it’s filled with bright, orange lilies – another big transformation.
Tiger lilies are covered with black or deep crimson spots, giving the appearance of the skin of a tiger. They have large, down-facing flowers, each with six recurved petals. Many flowers can be up to five inches in diameter.
The tiger lily’s petals bend back far during the flowering cycle, curling up against its own stem and exposing the stamens and pistol for visiting pollinators.
Lilies are well-known for having heavily pollinated stamens, which stain. When cutting, always remove the anthers to prevent a clothing disaster – just pinch them off with gloved fingers.
There are also a few white lilies in this bed – adding more interest to the long floral display.
This lily is white and orange with bright orange pollinated stamens.
The blackish, round “seeds” that develop in the axils of the leaves along the main stem are called bulbils.
The leaves can grow to three inches long and about 3/4-inch wide. They are medium green, narrow, smooth along their margins, and glabrous, clasping the stem at their bases.
And there are still many more lilies just waiting to open. Tiger lilies do best in full sun.
Along both sides of the pergola, I planted a hedge of smaller boxwood shrubs. I planted this side in 2017, and they’ve grown in so excellently.
This pergola starts across from my perennial flower cutting garden and runs along the carriage road leading to my Winter House. It’s one of the first gardens guests see when they come to visit.
On the granite posts, there are still a few lasting clematis flowers. I have always loved clematis, and over the years I have grown many varieties of this wonderful plant. It has also been called traveller’s joy, virgin’s bower, leather flower, or vase vine or “Old Man’s Beard,” because of the long fluffy seed heads that look similar to an old man’s beard.
Here’s a darker purple clematis still holding on to its color and form.
I also have pops of daylilies. The daylily is a low-maintenance perennial—easy to grow, virtually disease- and pest-free, and able to survive drought, uneven sunlight, and poor soil. The daylily’s botanical name, Hemerocallis, comes from Greek hemera “day” and kallos meaning “beauty”. The name is appropriate, since each flower lasts only one day. Despite their name, daylilies are not “true lilies.” Leaves grow from a crown and the flowers form on leafless stems called “scapes,” which rise above the foliage.
The entire pergola border and its surrounding gardens, trees, and other specimens provide a spectacular show every year. I am so proud of how it’s grown.
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