Midsummer Update From the Laughing Dragon Garden!

It has been quite a while since the last update, and the plants in the Laughing Dragon Garden has progressed from tiny sprouts to lots of fully grown plants and we are enjoying the fruits of our earlier efforts.

Looking into the garden

So far, it has been an interesting year in the sense that the things that have done well are doing extremely well and the things that are not doing so well are doing extremely badly. Seems like there is almost no middle ground this year.

One of our colorful zinnias

But that is part of the joy of gardening! You just never know what you're going to get so you sow and plant what you can and hope for the best.

Flowers everywhere!

This year we added a lot of color to the garden, in addition to just the food plants. We planted some zinnias from seed and they have grown up to be a wonderful splash of color growing in pots around the garden.

As always, our yellow rose, which is also wonderfully fragrant, is a perpetual show off!

As has historically been the case, the herb bed is pretty wild and overgrown at this point. We generally tend to let it be, because the flowers of both the marjoram and the chives attract lots and lots of bees.

The season for black raspberries has come to an end, and it was a medium well sort of year although not nearly as bountiful as last year when we ended up putting about 20 bags in the freezer.

The raspberries are now given way to the blackberries which are just starting to come into their season. Looks like it's going to be a bumper crop provided they don't dry out. Already had the first few berries and although they were a bit tart, they were very tasty because we've had a fair amount of sun.

Meanwhile, our strawberries are starting to bloom again for the second time and some of them are actually setting berries. This year we're letting the runners go pretty wild so that we can use them to create new plants for next year. On the whole, however, it was not a great year for strawberries.

Our first set of lettuce is now starting to bolt, but we have enjoyed salads with dinner pretty much every day for the past six weeks or so.

Meanwhile, the second set of lettuce is coming into its prime and we just pick from it as needed rather than letting it grow into full heads.

For whatever reason, our first two crops of arugula — which are historically very easy to grow — didn't turn out all that successfully. We now have a third set growing and they seem to be doing a little bit better at least in there very young stage.

In the space we like to call "The Beanery" we have also added some color with some sweet peas against the wall which also had a lovely fragrance! There are also some zinnias and a couple of marigolds mixed in here.

There are also a couple of "black" sunflowers growing in there and doing really well. These are actually volunteers from years past.

The snow peas have done quite well and continue to bear, although nothing like a couple of years back when we literally harvested close to 20 lb from a very tiny spot. This year they've given us about six to eight dinners worth and there's still a little bit more to come.

Meanwhile, the experiment with the purple runner beans — which are shelling beans — seems to be going quite well. Aside from the spectacular bright red flowers, they have set an impressive number of bean pods some of which are getting quite large.

We really weren't too sure what to expect from these as it was the first year that we were growing them and we grew them from plants rather than from seed. But it looks like they're going to create a tremendous harvest. And since they're heirloom, we will be able to save some of the seeds for next year's growth. Well, at least if it turns out that we like the way they taste!

Looks like it's going to be quite a good tomato year, although a fairly late one. The first red tomatoes are making themselves known, although the biggest crop looks like it's going to be on the roma tomato bushes.

These are just laden down it should be harvestable in another 3 to 4 weeks, provided we have some warmth and sun.

Still on the "uncertain" list would be the peppers which are finally starting to set flowers although the plants remain quite small. It could be that it is just not been warm enough this year.

We've only had a spectacular pepper Harvest one year and 2014, and the peppers in that year were growing in virtually pure chicken manure and somehow produce more Peppers than you could imagine.

Lastly, it looks like we are going to enjoy a good apple season!

We weren't too sure how the apple trees would respond to dealing with standing water for almost 6 weeks back in late winter, but they don't seem too unhappy.

And that's about all I have to offer for this update and I should probably end here before this gets ridiculously long!

I appreciate you stopping by and looking at our pictures and hope you'll come by and visit for the next update!

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All photos are my own!