Good morning. Can you believe it is already the first day of August? It seems summer, like all good things, passes far too quickly; and before you know it, the yellow buses will be back on the road and the pace of life will change again.

But we have one more month to enjoy the wonders of a Maine summer before we head into the glories of fall.

Today’s column will be a bit of a split bill with flowers as always, but also a short foray into the world of growing vegetables. As most of you know, I don’t grow food crops for the most part. I always have a few tomato plants in pots on the deck just because my grandchildren take such delight in picking them and popping them into their mouths (and I enjoy watching their smiles as the seeds squirt). I always grow herbs and have planted blueberries, again for the grandchildren, although Mother Nature has been generous with her wild offerings of blueberries as well as raspberries and blackberries. I grow cherries for the birds although I pop a few in my mouth while working in the garden. But, overall, I am quite content to patronize farms and fruit stands.

A real back saver

There seems to be a new vegetable trend across the country — hay bale gardening — and a friend of mine, Fran Rodgers, tried it on a small scale this summer. I thought you might like to know that it seems to work quite well. When she asked me about it this spring, I was rather skeptical and, to be honest, didn’t give her a lot of encouragement. The basic premise is that you grow vegetables in bales of hay instead of the ground. This obviously saves the work of preparing the ground and spending time weeding — and it saves your back.

The concept is basically like container gardening, except instead of a pot you use hay bales. Hay when left outside begins to decompose from the center out and Fran’s garden of bales bears out this theory. As plants grow and time passes, the bales become smaller as they decompose. This decomposition provides the environmental equivalent of compost and a great growing medium for vegetables.

Fran tells me she simply pulled the hay apart in the middle, took the seedlings with their soil out of the pots and plopped them in. She pushed the hay back around the plant and watered them. The photo that accompanies this article shows her eggplant. It had a number of small little lavender-hued green fruits hanging from it when I took the photo two weeks ago. Her cucumber and zucchini plants had even more fruits that were further along, as did the pepper plant.

Hay bale gardening offers obvious advantages for people who have poor soil, don’t want to till large spaces or have back problems. Another plus is that vegetables ripen in hay rather than soil and, therefore, there’s a better chance they won’t develop brown spots or other damp-earth issues. And at the end of the season, you just spread the hay along with the plants over that poor soil for natural decomposition over the winter — and you will improve that soil with organic matter.

So this might be something to keep in mind for next spring. Fran’s only warning is this: Don’t put hay bales really close together because she thinks her zucchini cross-pollinated with her cucumbers — she is getting some really odd-looking cucumbers.

Bigger, flashier and prettier

We are in the heart of daylily days. The heat of summer brings these wonderful plants into their glory. They are everywhere here in Turner and just about anywhere else. You can spot them at intersections, along stonewalls, in gardens and at the golf course. They grow very easily and survive our winters well. Most daylilies are zone 3 plants, which means they will be quite happy several hundred miles north of us.

Tried-and-true orange daylilies and brown-spotted orange tiger lilies grow by roadsides and in abundance by homes and in gardens because they have been transplanted there. But for those of you who crave something bigger, flashier or just plain prettier in your garden, the hybridizers have been hard at work.

There are so many choices and the lilies you buy at nurseries or at daylily farms can be absolutely stunning. I have included several photos to show you some examples. There are ruffled flowers in shades of pink, doubles in yellows and apricots, and traditional trumpets in many colors beyond the orange on the roadside and the yellow of “Stella de Oro,” a mainstay on traffic islands and in public gardens.

I have one called “Strawberry Candy” that sports a beautiful pink trumpet with raspberry pink striping that grows only 14 inches high. I also have an apricot beauty that stands 30 inches tall with blooms of about 5 inches across that lights up the back of a garden.

There are hundreds of them out there and many of the new daylilies are in bloom for much longer than the traditional ones. They begin in late June and continue blooming through frost. These plants require very little attention. Give them a slow-release organic fertilizer in the spring and leave them alone.

Daylilies continue to grow into larger and larger plants through the years; they can be easily split into several plants if they become too large. I know of no insects that bother them and the deer don’t like them, either.

Until next time, if the weather continues to be hot, keep those hoses going and make a blueberry pie. Nothing tastes better with vanilla ice cream than a homemade blueberry pie. Maybe you can even show the grandkids how to make homemade ice cream. Now there’s a thought.

Happy gardening.

Jody Goodwin has been gardening for more than 25 years. She lives in Turner with her husband, Ike, her dog and two cats. She may be reached by writing to her in care of the Sun Journal, 104 Park St., Lewiston, Maine, 04243-4400 or by e-mail at [email protected].