i have a few things to add to aarons post. first thing is that i am actually pretty delighted in the dicovery of the former woodchip mulch dump, which has composted into a rich darkness four years after its closing. it reminds me of the rich earthiness prouced by a decaying log in a forest. i can't wait to get a pickup truck and load it full of this stuff in a few month and spread it in a several inch high layer over the whole garden. also, around it there were several lots of disused brick and paving stone back there. we're going to contact the physical plant in the next few days to find out if there are indeed no plans for the mess of bricks, in which case we will happily hall it off to the garden to make some sort of use of it. we also need to contact horticulture for some more woodchip mulch-- we have use for it in many places.
i'd like to look into renting a mulcher-shredder one day in the late fall -- november, so we can shred up all of the old branches and tree leaves and such for quicker composting. maybe even look here and there for people to bring us their raked leaves too.
on the note about our hybrid tomatoes -- its possible that some strains are more resistant to cracking than others. its hard to say -- hopefully its a mix of our mulching with straw and consistent deep watering too.
i found an even cheaper source for butterfly bush later this evening -- Free! Ashley's parents will let us have some cuttings from there butterfly bushes for free, and a book i have says it grows from cuttings very easy. so the next time i go over i'll use some pruning shears and cut some and start growing it in some small buckets. one is purple and one is white, by the way.

Jim came up to the house today and we took a trip to the wood chip dump behind the parking lots on campus. The dump has been officially closed since 1998, and there was very little left (comparatively speaking), and most of that had composted down. We only filled two garbage bags of the stuff and spread over some of the bare spots in the butterfly garden. We also modified our garden plan slightly to accomodate the already well-established coneflowers, rearranged some of the flower beds, removed the one hosta from the plan and put butterfly weed in that spot, which Jim said he found somewhere for cheap. We decided to keep the Russian sage there as well, which we'll cut down to the ground before winter hits.

Tom (director of the Honors Program) was curious about the "yard-long" beans, and found a site that talked about them in detail. Apparently it's not just a nickname--they can and do actually grow up to 3 feet in length, though they suggest picking them when they're 18" long or less, to ensure tenderness. We'll probably leave a few on the vine just to see how long they will get. We've had really good luck with the tomatoes this year, as far as the fruits not suffering from cracking like they have in the past; this, despite nearly a month with only some tenths of an inch of rainfall. We may in fact be more vigilant about watering, but I also wonder if our success doesn't have something to do with the varietals we're growing. Maybe heirlooms are more prone to cracking than the more modern strains? Jim, do you know anything about that? Finally, our largest sunflower broke the 8' mark (I had to stand on a chair to reach the top of it).

Was looking at the butterfly garden today, thinking about projects for the coming weeks. Sometime tomorrow I'm going to deadhead the flowers still blooming (mainly purple coneflower and blanket flower). Since I haven't done this before and am not totally sure I'll do it right, I'll only deadhead half of each, so we still have seed heads for next year just in case. All the daisies have more or less gone to seed, so I think their cycle is pretty much over. I'll collect those seeds this week as well. If I have time I may start weeding out the walking path we have planned for next year.

Two more projects, more long term:

1) thoroughly weed a two foot wide strip at the front of the butterfly garden, lay down newspaper and wood chip mulch (we can get wood chips from the university's heap across campus, but it's a two-person job). This should keep the weeds down until next season. We should do the same with the walking path once that's cleared.

2) before the end of the season, we should take the two large clusters of hostas (two different types) and do the following: for the larger group, reduce the size by about half, separate the bulbs, and plant them in a line diagonally in the terraced area between the new herb patch and flower garden (I'll post illustrative pics of all this eventually); do the same with the entire group of hostas with the two-tone leaves, in a line parallel to the first. This will achieve several things. It will keep us to our original flower garden plan, it will keep the hostas healthy and not crowded, it will keep the weeds down in the new plot (which has been a continual problem), and when the tree next to the two rows of hostas becomes overgrown as it does every season, they will have plenty of shade.

On other random notes, it looks as though our "yard long" beans are nearly halfway there. Jim, I spotted what may have been the same woodchuck a few weeks ago, on Andy's side of the garden (though I couldn't tell whether it was a woodchuck or a groundhog). I got pretty good germination of the cruciferous plants--we have cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower for the fall crops, to be transplanted in a couple of weeks. The followup planting of corn we did is late for the season but looks healthy and unmolested. While in St. Louis this weekend I noticed that my sister has elephant garlic (which she may have planted last fall) with six foot stalks. It actually feels comfortable today outside. May do some weeding later in the afternoon.

Blogger has been having some problems today with uploading.

oh i forgot about this incident: i saw a great big woodchuck today at the honors house. it was as big as a basset hound, i think, short legs, quite stout, long. i was walking round the shed toward the front, and saw it running away from me, about 20 feet ahead. it stopped when it got to the safety of the pine trees. i crept about until i could get a good view of it for identification.

i ventured out into the heat advisory weather today to go to the garden and turn on the water. even though we've gotten a few spots of rain this last week, it's added to less than a quarter inch, which is not adequate. so it got water for two and a half hours, from 5pm to 7:30pm. Its still 90 degrees at 8:20 at night. i think it hit 97 today.

anyway, i also tied up some tomatoes and did a little pruning. one plant had surpassed its stake, so i trimmed it by six inches down to its top. the first large red tomatoes are in, i think theres four or five on andy miller's side. so i took a couple, and after this dinner digests, or else for breakfast, i'll have it.

the mulching with straw has been effective. i checked under the straw mulch at the strawberry patch, and the top of the soil was still damp. in adjacent patch of soil, which is very bare and exposed - bone dry. and both are in full sun. mulching is such good prevention -- its a slow composter, it save moisture, and keeps weeds down.. its something i should be more diligent about in future years.

the one thing on my mind about the whole of the garden right now is the need to do a thourough harvest. the beans are mostly in, and the peas are good as dead. but there's about 30 feet of beans on andy's side, and noone's minding it. it needs to get done, or the food will be wasted.

i am looking forward to fall crops this year. i've gotten a few more emails from folks on the gardenweb.com message boards, and alll of them have been about how much more successful they've been with shallots and garlic if planted in late september and harvested in late july, rather than planting those crops in the spring. all of them have been in zone 6, and most from kentucky. this was our first year with garlic, but september is 60 days away and we can plant our fall crop.

man, its hot out there. i hope it cools off midweek so we can get to a harvest.