{"id":168912,"date":"2025-07-02T06:15:40","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T12:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=168912"},"modified":"2025-07-02T17:46:34","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T23:46:34","slug":"vegetable-garden-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/02\/vegetable-garden-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Vegetable Garden Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

A temporary break from the birds and wildlife of Montana.<\/p>\n

It’s that time of year. I usually post an annual garden update in July and many of my readers seem to be enjoy them so I decided to do it again. If you’re not interested in vegetable gardens or gardening in general, I wouldn’t blame you if you skipped this one.<\/p>\n

These are all cell phone photos and I’m a little disappointed in their quality. Next time I post photos like these I’ll use a ‘real’ camera.<\/em><\/p>\n

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My (mostly) vegetable garden is long and narrow and it’s pretty big – over 1100 sq. ft. – so it’s hard to take photos that show good detail of the entire garden. This photo, taken yesterday morning, is the best I could do.<\/p>\n

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Let’s use the same photo to see what’s out there.<\/p>\n

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  1. Grape vines<\/span>. More about them in a minute.<\/li>\n
  2. Rhubarb<\/span>. My rhubarb is always a great success. I use it mostly to make rhubarb cobbler and to give to friends and neighbors.<\/li>\n
  3. Chives<\/span>. I don’t eat many chives but I like their flowers in spring. I have more chives in a flower bed behind me.<\/li>\n
  4. Rosemary<\/span>. I use a lot of rosemary. Used it again last night to baste filet mignon (which is usually out of my budget). A few days ago I used it to make rosemary potatoes.<\/li>\n
  5. Sage<\/span>. I don’t use much sage either, but I think they’re a handsome plant.<\/li>\n
  6. Zucchini<\/span>. You know how that stuff is. I’ve been eating and giving away zucchini for nearly three weeks already.<\/li>\n
  7. Regular cucumbers<\/span> – 2 plantings to spread out the harvest, growing on a vertical trellis.<\/li>\n
  8. A mystery imposter<\/span>. This was supposed to be lemon cucumbers (my favorite kind) – that’s what it said on the seed packet. But I can tell these aren’t cucumbers – at this point they look more like winter squash of some kind. I just hope they aren’t pumpkins. I’m not particularly fond of orange and I’m not a fan of Halloween.<\/li>\n
  9. Amaranth<\/span>. Growing along my back fence. More about my amaranth in a minute also.<\/li>\n
  10. Tomatoes<\/span>. Nine tomato plants of five different varieties growing in a long row. My garden gets slightly less than an optimal amount of sunlight, so my tomatoes aren’t as early as those of some gardeners. I should be eating my first BLT’s with garden tomatoes in a couple of days.<\/li>\n
  11. Golden beets<\/span>. Three rows of them. I love golden beets and will never grow red beets again. I’ve been eating their greens for a couple of weeks now and harvested my first beets two days ago. I gave those beets and greens to a good friend. She said they were “freaking delicious”.<\/li>\n
  12. Nasturtiums<\/span> – in front of the beets. I like old fashioned flowers, orange or not. These are just barely beginning to flower.<\/li>\n
  13. Peppers<\/span>. Five varieties. Some are doing better than others.<\/li>\n
  14. Eggplant<\/span>. Two plants, with only one fruit so far.<\/li>\n
  15. Spaghetti squash<\/span>. My spaghetti squash is hiding back there behind my tomatoes. It started flowering this morning.<\/li>\n
  16. Zinnias<\/span>. Just because I like zinnias.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I did have one complete failure this year. When my Swiss chard plants were still small, insects, probably earwigs, wiped them out. I don’t use unnatural pesticides or herbicides in my garden so that’s a chance I take. I suppose even earwigs deserve something to eat but I’m a reluctant donor.<\/p>\n

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    Part of my herb garden in a planter I built decades ago. Two types of parsley, basil, marjoram and thyme, growing right outside my kitchen door. Yes, my basil needs deadheading again. I have oregano growing in its own pot just out of frame to the right.<\/p>\n

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    Here we see amaranth growing against my back fence. That stuff grows very fast and tall so I planted it there to provide privacy from neighbors. As I sit on my patio looking out toward the garden it’s obvious to me that my amaranth is growing like it’s on steroids.<\/p>\n

    But I wanted to know precisely how fast<\/span> it’s growing so…<\/p>\n

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    two days ago, June 30th, I measured one of the plants precisely and marked its height with a horizontal line on the fence behind it. Then yesterday, July 1st, exactly 24 hours later, I marked the height of the same plant on the fence. In 24 hours that amaranth plant grew slightly more than 3 1\/2 inches.<\/p>\n

    Edit: At 8 AM this morning I measured that amaranth plant again. In the last 24 hours it’s grown nearly another 3 1\/2″. At that rate it’ll be at least as tall as my 6′ fence by 8 AM tomorrow.<\/em><\/p>\n

    In previous years some of my amaranth plants have grown to slightly over 13′ tall.<\/p>\n

    Interestingly, nearly all of the growth of my amaranth plants occurs at night.<\/p>\n

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    When I bought my house nearly 35 years ago there were two small grape vines growing on my east side chain link fence. Since then those two grape vines have nearly taken over the world. They’ve spread along my entire east side fence and about 1\/3rd of my back fence, for a total of 88′ of grape vine in my back yard alone (yes, I measured it yesterday).<\/p>\n

    Those two vines have also invaded the yards of three of my neighbors. But everyone seems to like them for the privacy they provide and for…<\/p>\n

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    their grapes. They’re a small variety of green seedless grapes and when ripe they’re very sweet and tasty. There are many hundreds of grape clusters like this one growing along the 88 horizontal feet of vines. Here they’re still small but they’ll get larger, although not as big as most grapes. I eat a few of them but the birds get most of them and I’m fine with that. Bandito the fox squirrel likes them too.<\/p>\n

    OK, enough (probably too much) about my garden. Here in northern Utah, we just entered our annual monsoon season so at this point my biggest fear regarding my garden is hail. Hail could wipe my entire garden out in just a few minutes.<\/p>\n

    Which makes me wonder if I should be making wine out of my grapes. I might need it.<\/p>\n

    Ron<\/p>\n

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    PS – Obviously, I don’t know when to quit.<\/em><\/p>\n

    This is the best year I’ve ever had with weeds in my garden. Every morning I spend about 10 minutes weeding my garden but weeds are few and far between so most of that time is spent trying to find weeds rather than cutting their nasty little heads off. So, I thought I’d provide my readers with a few tips that I’ve found helpful in keeping weeds at bay.<\/em><\/p>\n