#SundayStills: Monthly Color Challenge: #Yellow in the August 2023 Garden

Published on by Yinglan

I’m surprised to say there aren’t much to do in the garden these days.

The thing I’m waiting on right now is for the melons to ripen. The cantaloupe plant is finally producing fruit. It has probably 5 melons on its vines right now if the bees did their jobs right. Meanwhile, there are the watermelons. There’s medium-sized melon ripening at the moment, which I believe will be ready at the end of the month. There’s also another watermelon but I’m holding my breath on that one, it doesn’t look quite right.

So I just go out every night, turn on the drip irrigation in the back garden while hand-watering the front garden with a 5-gallon bucket and a 2-gallon watering can. One night a week, I would also bring a large storage tub to deep water my container peppers.

I’ve sowed many seeds in the last few weeks for the fall garden and it’s been disappointing. The seeds either wouldn’t germinate or it’s super leggy like it doesn’t have enough sun. I know the reason, though. It’s the warm soil. Cool weather vegetables dislike warm soil. The thing is, there’s no way mom would let me start seeds indoors and even if I could, the seeds might probably still be leggy because it’s so warm in the house.

Anyway, when the garden is done watering, I often like to take a moment and take in all the gifts the garden has to offer. The fall garden may be on the verge of failure but I still have at least one-and-half months to enjoy what I have now.

Sometimes, those moments might even end up being a good photo op. Like this picture of my once-again abundant crop of cherry tomatoes – this year mostly in the yellow varieties – I was bent down, almost on my knees because I wanted to get another view of the garden. Hey, what do you know, it does look pretty good down here.

Some nights, rather than lingering in the back garden, I like to linger in the front garden and take in all the giant sunflowers I have this year.

They weren’t easy to grow. I can’t even begin to tell you how many seeds I’ve sow to get only 6 to germinate. It’s the horrible clay soil – it’s either hard as rock or muddy as heck. I’ve amended most of the soil by mixing it with compost but apparently, it take quite a bit of time to achieve results.

Once the seeds germinated and the plant started growing, it shot up like a rocket, while I waited patiently for the flower to unveil itself since I had no idea what color the flowers would be because I have mixed seeds.

I was surprised they’re all multi-branched and right now, I have plant that’s probably over 6-feet tall with over 10 flowers from top to bottom. Mom immediately said, “plant more next year.” I sure will, as long as it will germinate.

22 thoughts on “#SundayStills: Monthly Color Challenge: #Yellow in the August 2023 Garden”

  3. Pingback: Sunday Stills Monthly Color Challenge: Are You All-in for #Yellow? – Second Wind Leisure Perspectives

  4. Beautiful sunflower and tomatos. It was hard to get the sunflaower seeds germinated when I was in California. We moved to Oregon 8 months ago. The weather is just right for the sunflowers. I got 90% germinated, but I don’t have a garden yet. I use potting soil and dug a small part in the clay soil to transplant them. They grow slowly but may not have flowers by the end of summer.

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    1. Wow, I wish I had 90% germination. That’s awesome but it’s odd that you could get them to germinate in California because my climate is similar to that of SoCal in summer and the sunflowers love it. I don’t think sunflowers mind all that much about the soil. The main thing is getting them germinated.

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      2. Actually, sunflowers have tap roots, like spinach and carrots, it’s what makes them so resilient. Their roots usually go down over a foot in the ground. Unfortunately, plants with tap roots also don’t germinate easily.

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  5. I’ve never tried to grow sunflowers. Yours is spectacular, though, Yinglan. I think it would be tough to get them to grow here in Prescott. The javelina would have them devoured before they got big enough to flower.

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      3. We didn’t move, but they don’t come around very often, and they’ve never been that close before or since. 🙂 So we are careful not to go out at night or even after dusk.

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