In this week’s update, the rainy weather finally came to an end, we’re seeing a ton of growth in our garden, including the grass and weeds, and I’m starting a new section called Seed of the Week. Let’s dive in.

Heat Wave

We had one of the coolest and wettest springs that I can remember this year. If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you know that this delayed our planting and slowed growth. That pattern broke as the official start of summer arrived with a four-day heat wave that has brought temperatures in the 90s, humidity, and a UV index above 10. There was no gradual transition between seasons this year. While it’s not my preferred weather, I’m very thankful that the ground can start drying out and plants can begin to take off.

The extreme heat can make working in the garden less fun, but it’s a reminder to take breaks, stay hydrated, and get as much work done outside the hottest part of the day. I failed at the last part of that this past weekend by working in the middle of the day, which is a mistake I won’t make again during this heat wave.

Lots of Growth

Even though the recent weather pattern hasn’t been ideal, it is allowing our plants to take off. With ample moisture in the ground, all that the plants needed was warmth and sunshine, and now that they have it, the plants have shown measurable growth in recent days. I want to highlight a few plants where this has been most evident.

Corn: Our corn is now about 15 inches tall and on pace to meet the “knee-high by the 4th of July” saying that I heard growing up. The base of the stalks looks strong, and the leaves are a beautiful green with that lovely waxy and silky texture. I continue to side dress them with blood meal every couple of weeks.

Beans and Peas: Our beans have exhibited consistent growth since germinating in mid-May. All the beans, except for the red bush beans that I started in early June, are about 8 inches tall. Our snow peas are also at this height, which led me to build a trellis for them this past week.

Eggplant & Spaghetti Squash: We transplanted a couple of eggplant starts a few weekends ago, and they are doing exceptionally well. They have been consistently producing flowers, and I even felt the start of a fruit on Sunday. We planted a lot of squash and melons this year, and the spaghetti squash start we bought in early May is doing wonderful. It’s spreading outward from the main stem and is starting to show where the flowers and fruit will grow.

Tomatoes & Peppers: Our tomato and pepper plants have started to flower, and one of the yellow pear tomato plants has fruit on it. This hot weather should help produce more fruit and help that first tomato ripen.

One small downside to the weather we’ve had is that weeds and grass have continued to grow at a fast pace. Managing the grass that’s inside our garden fences has been difficult from the beginning. We have a plus sign-shaped walkway between our garden beds. I’m able to tackle that with the mower, but the grass within the garden beds is a different story. We’ve been using hedge-trimming shears to cut down all the grass, which has been surprisingly effective. Hopefully, the hot weather will lead to the grass growing a bit slower moving forward.

Seed of the Week – Queen Aliquippa Tomatoes

This is the first installment of a new section I’m calling Seed of the Week. Each week, I’ll go over a seed we’ve grown and are particularly fond of. I won’t go in-depth with the seed’s history in this weekly post (I’m saving that for a standalone series), but I may briefly highlight the seed’s name inspiration. I will also go over our experience with the seed, including how it is to grow, and what the fruit should look like when it’s ripe. I considered many options for the first Seed of the Week section, but I am going with the Queen Aliquippa tomato, which I briefly highlighted when I wrote about the seeds we bought for this year’s garden.

We bought our Queen Aliquippa seeds from Sow True Seeds, which is located in Asheville, North Carolina. The seeds are named for Queen Aliquippa, a Seneca tribe leader from the 18th century who lived in Central and Western Pennsylvania, which is where Magz and I are from. Queen Aliquippa is a well-known name where we live, so we had to try seeds named in her honor. We’ve never grown these seeds or even seen the tomatoes in person, but the tomatoes are categorized as slicing, so they’re likely larger than pear tomatoes but smaller than a beefsteak. They stay green when ripe but are supposed to be incredibly sweet.

Our experience with growing these seeds has been positive. They were some of the earliest seeds I started, and they were easy to germinate. Unfortunately, not having a strong enough grow light prevented them from growing as big as I would have liked before transplanting them, but we did finally get them outside in late May. We started with two plants going outside when they were about 4 inches tall, and they’ve done remarkably well in spite of the poor weather. As of yesterday, they were over a foot tall. The leaves are beautiful, and we haven’t experienced any leaf curl, which is common with a lot of tomato plants.

Up Next

This coming week will be focused on making sure our plants are watered and aren’t showing any signs of stress from the heat. We’re also looking forward to seeing more flower and fruit development, as well as the potential for harvesting our first tomatoes. Happy Gardening!