My garden this summer was not the greatest, unfortuntly. My tomatos and peppers were ravaged all summer by leaf-footed bugs and tomato hornworms (the eggplant powered through, though), and my zucchini plants did not produce one single zucchini?? That shocked me. Last year i was drowning in them! And i specifically grew slicer tomatos, asian eggplant, and the zucchini to make ratatouille. :( Was looking forward to homegrown ratatouille. oh well. Hopefully next year will be better.

On the plus side, when we first moved into our house in winter 2024, I sprinkled native wildflower seed in my garden beds to overwinter. Usually the first growing season they don't produce flowers, so I didn't see any flowers last year; but this year I had tons of black-eyed susans, Lanced-leaved Coreopsis, and Echinacea Purperea. I also found a lot of Purple Love Grass growing naturally in my yard as well!

My peach and mulberry trees are doing amazingly! They've more than doubled what they were when I bought them (I got a set of 3 trees of each that were arounf 12-18 inches off of etsy) and the peaches flowered this year, but I did pinch the buds off because they're just a little too small for fruit right now. I did leave one persimmon on my Fuyu that I got even though I shouldn't have, but when I tried it, it was soo good. I've never tried asian persimmons before, just wild american ones, and I get the hype. It was so sweet and juicy, with a distinctly honey-like flavor.

I learned about an interesting new bug this year! In the pics above, you see the freaky red thorn-like things coming out of the leaves? That's the Grape Tube Gallmaker (Ampelomyia Viticola), they create galls on New World grape vines. The entire vine looked like this! Very cool! It almost looks like the leaves are covered in piercings or they have a interesting hairstyle.

Projects

I've been working on a lot of crochet projects, most recently on some blankets for my sisters and mom as a holiday gift. I have made a few things for myself! I made a sweater, a sweater vest, and a beret.

Chopping and dropping has been the name of the game for the past couple of weeks. I deal with a few nasty invasives (chinese privet, amur honeysuckle, various wildflowers) and some prolific natives (cherry laurel, yaupon holly, poison ivy) and of course, i want to honor the energy, time, and resources used to help these plants grow, i don't want to just bag them up and put them on the curb. So I chop and drop on my in-ground garden beds, where they'll break down and feed the soil and invertebrates that call the soil home. Of course they grow back, but putting pressure on them will slow them down, and as i remove stumps and such hopefully i'll eradicate them and replace with natives. Any trunks that are especially large get turned into edging for my pathways.

In other news my father-in-law gave me some peppers and tomatos, and promised more in the future (yay!) currently have some brandywine pinks, super sweet 100s, pumpkin spice jalapeno, brazilian starfish, west indes red habanero, cayenne, orange spice jalapeno, and lemon spice jalapeno. (he loves growing peppers) I just started my zucchini (one of my favorite summer veg) already they're popping up and i planted them yesterday!

In other news, last year i got some serviceberry trees and planted them in the wooded area of my yard, but the heat got to them and i thought they died, but they lived! very happy about that. Eventually i'd like to take cuttings and add more around the yard.

Now that my herbaceous perennials have popped up, it's time to clean up the garden. This starts with chop n' drop.

Chop n' drop is basically what it says on the tin- chopping up unwanted/invasive plants and putting them in the garden beds to build the soil. Usually I let them dry out a few days then I'll add a layer of pine needles on top as mulch. My 'soil' is just sand with chunks of clay, degraded from being used as a pine plantation in the past. Repairing the soil and restoring biodiversity is my upmost concern for my yard, and sure, it would happen eventually by itself, but i prefer to help.

Once the garden beds are mulched, i can figure out what to add. I have a number of species I've added, but there's still a lot of empty space. This year i'm hoping to add milkweed, black-eyed susan, mountain mint, and wild sunflower. (trying to create a small list that is doable) Trees are also a concern, but any added would have to be next fall/winter. It's already too hot to add any now, transplanting in the heat leads to sadness and dispair.

When you hear about 'the vine that ate the south' you probably think of Kudzu, and that's warrented. But a very close second contender is chinese wisteria.

Every year around this time of year the area i live in has an explosion of purple, it's inescapable. And while yes, we do have our own native wisteria, the native variety is shorter, taking on a more shrub-like look (it will climb though, if given the opportunity) and has some different qualities if you look closely, but they don't bloom until june-july. No, it's without a doubt, invasive wisteria eating my town.

And look, i get it, wisteria is beautiful! My god, the way the flowers gently blow in the wind, and just how elegant and sweet the plant is i really do get it, but can we stop planting invasives when a native is right there?

green colonialism is a curse.

Also, i got sunburned in the garden today. DON'T FORGET YOUR SUNSCREEN!!!!

This is the absolute best time of the year to do major work in the garden; summertime gets too hot (multiple days reaching 100f, high humidity) and cold weather pisses me off, but march-april-may just works. We do have high temps in the high 80s(f) but usually a cool breeze is consistant, and the sun doesn't beat down as hard as it does in the summer.

I've already done a bit, moved my peach, fig, and mulberry trees to more optimal spots in the yard, planted some Blazing Star (Liatris Spicata) corms, started some common milkweed from seed, got a Fuyu persimmon, got an elderberry bush, and another fig.

My main goals for the upcoming months:

• Level the yard a bit. The center of the yard is lower than the two sides (its bowl-shaped) and it dips down really far in the back. I want to bring up the back and the area around my house. (that's a whole other story)
• build a retaining wall. This is in tandem with goal one, by leveling the left side of the yard and taking out some dirt and replacing a small hillside with a retaining wall, i can use the dirt elsewhere to level other parts of the yard. (I'm making this sound more confusing than it is) We had an old dead tree fall, i'm going to chop that up for the wall. its short, maybe a two and a half feet so im not too concerned for any structural integrity issues. should the day come that i need to replace the wood i'll do it then.
• Increase biodiversity. First thing i did last year when we moved in was throw down some wildflower seeds and fruit trees, this year since i have a better understanding of the microclimates of the yard i can do more, more confidently. I really want to get some more butterfly host plants; I have the local native plant sale already marked on my calender, and I asked on of the workers of a local nursery when they get their milkweed (may)