Let's talk about July garden chores. Yes, there is plenty to do in the miserably hot month of July in the garden. Do it all early in the morning while it is still a bit cool if you can.
Happy Independence Day to all of my fellow gardeners in the United States of America! Yes, it is once again the 4th of July and we are grateful for the many freedoms and blessings that God has allowed us to have in this great country.
Because we are running a 50% off sale and because we are getting huge orders, David asked for some of our people to come in this morning and work for half of a day. Four people, not including me, came in to work. Linda, Brendon, Aaron, and Matthew. They all left by noon.
Well, except for Aaron and Matt. They stayed with us for a nice grilled burger lunch and movie marathon of Independence Day 1 and 2. It is now 4:30pm and they are still here. We are watching Resurgence which is Independence Day 2.
I have been learning a new skill today. I am making garden journals to sell on Amazon. So far, I have made two. They are under review but when (if) they go live for sale, I will provide you with links. As I have said before, all you need is a notebook. These are nice garden journal notebooks that I know you will enjoy having.
It was quiet as far as fireworks go until around 11pm. I heard several go off before I fell asleep to the left of us. Because we are in an exceptional drought, no fireworks are allowed now.
The most important of all July garden chores here in South Central Texas is to water, water, water. We watered quite a few things today even though it is a holiday. If some things go one or two days with no water, they are dead in this horrible heat.
Pull up dead and dying plants.
Add compost for fall beds if you live in a warm place where you will have a fall garden, like Texas.
Good Tuesday morning. It is 8am. I have already written all of the paychecks and I've done some website corrections to our Shopify store. I need to get dressed and get over to the store. David does not like the way the table for my helpers looks in the store so he is taking that out. My order helpers will have to be down in Fulfillment instead of in the store.
I just ate the one casaba melon we harvested. It was a bit soft but so sweet and delicious!
We've had a few customers this morning while trying to catch up with a tremendous amount of orders from our sale, which is still going on by the way. It is a bit overcast but there is no rain in the forecast and it is 92° at 1:30pm.
Today was payday and I wrote the checks early this morning before 7am. Good thing because we are getting our puppies spayed later on this week and it is not cheap.
We just changed our shipping costs last week. We had free shipping for a while. Some of the packages can cost up to $20 to ship so we were losing out on a lot of money. We then had it at $3.95 so we were still having to pay a good deal of the shipping costs which include the post office rates, signature tracking, our envelopes and boxes which are not free, our labels, and our ink. Now the shipping depends on how much you are spending as it should be.
The USPS raises their rates every year and people still do business with them. When we raise our rates because USPS raised theirs, people threaten us that unless they get free shipping, they won't order from us. Fine. We don't need to be paying your postage and losing money anymore.
July garden chores are important. As I said yesterday, watering is most important. Another one of the really important July garden chores is to harvest, harvest, harvest. Things are ripening rapidly and need to be picked before they get too big and before animals or bugs get the fruit and eat it or bite it.
Matt was out in the garden doing July garden chores both yesterday and today, mostly harvesting and watering. It is miserably hot and humid out there but if you are going to have a garden, you have to take care of it, right?
Happy Wednesday! It is a hot and humid day. Our 50% off seed sale is still going on. We had someone stop by this morning at 8am to buy chocolate covered pecans on his way to work. They are not on sale but Matt sold them to him.
The mailman brought back one of our orders in a clear plastic bag. The envelope was coated in dark brown, probably coffee that someone spilled and let dry. I opened it. The order was done on April 1, 2022 and it took the post office three months to destroy, lose, and find and return it to us. They did not offer us a postage refund, close to $4. They manage to lose several orders per month. Most we do not get back.
We spent most of the day pulling, filling, and shipping orders with few customers in this heat. Most people are still at the beach from the Independence Day holiday. Sounds so good!
Good Thursday morning! We have lots going on today with everything. First, we had to get up extra early and leave the house by 7:15am this morning with the two puppies. Pamela and Sue Ellen are getting fixed today so they don't get repossessed by Atascosa County! They are rescue dogs from the shelter who were three months old when we got them. David signed papers saying they would be spayed or they would be taken from our home.
The puppies were kind of freaked out and drooled all over the backseat of the truck. When we got to the vet's office, they knew where they were and Sue Ellen was jumping high, trying to get out of her collar and run. Pamela just stayed behind David which she always does when she is scared. Poor babies.
Aaron and Matthew are out back performing July garden chores like harvesting, mowing, watering, and fixing water lines. Some still are not right so not all of the trees are getting watered as they should be. This explains why some of our brand new trees that we spent a fortune on again for the third time are dead. How is it possible to say they are getting watered and yet there is no water spout where the trees are in some rows? I do not understand. One of the most important of July garden chores is to make sure every plant and tree has access to water.
Today is our grandson, Max's birthday. He turns eight. Unfortunately, I goofed. Amazon delivered his things here yesterday so he will get his gifts from us in a few weeks when he visits again.
David is asking some of our people to work the weekend again. Linda is here today instead of being off. All hands on deck while we tackle the many extra orders because of our 50% off seed sale. JULYBLOWOUT is the checkout code to use at David's Garden Seeds®.
We are redesigning our seed packets to get the logo on the front along with important information so soon you will see new improved packs. We had a design meeting this morning about it.
I have been designing garden planner notebooks with our logo. We are hoping to have some in the store by the end of July if I like how they look when they are published. They will be 100 lined pages for all of your garden notes along with a nice cover. We will have several styles to choose from and they will make wonderful gifts for any gardener. I am very excited about them. We may also have a good T-shirt and baseball cap printer that we are checking into. I get a lot of requests for T-shirts.
I just received a few samples of the garden planners and they look good, better than I had hoped! Yay!
At 12:15pm, I called the vet's office and found out that both puppies are doing well after surgery and that we can pick them up at 3:30pm. Not sure why they didn't call when they said they would but I guess they got busy.
I went to the house and cleaned their big kennel. I added fluffy mats for them to be comfortable in. They keep ripping them apart. Puppy energy--you gotta love it!
When I came back out to the store, Austin from Comfort Commander was in here getting some pecan coffee and things. Apparently, we called him to work on one of the AC units in one of our buildings. I did not know about it.
We left to go pick up the puppies at the vet's office and got there around 3:45pm. We paid and got a nice $600 discount from what I was quoted on the phone so that was great!
Then the puppies were brought out to us with cones of shame on their necks! This is the first time that any of our puppies had to wear them. They have to keep them on for the next two weeks! They hate them and keep trying to knock them off by scraping on the floor and walls.
The pond man is coming tomorrow afternoon. I sure hope he can do something. The water is not clear.
Matt mowed the entire farm today. Nacho is up at youth camp with his church as a counselor so he could not do it. Thank you, Matthew.
July garden chores include starting new tomato seeds and other vegetables for the fall garden. Tomatoes take a long time before they can produce so you always want to get a head start by starting them indoors such as in a greenhouse if you have one. Get them going six to eight weeks before fall planting season and you will get fall tomatoes.
Good morning and happy Friday! It is hot and humid, miserable! My zinnias are wilting so I have turned on the water for them. Hopefully, they will look good by the end of the day.
The pond man is finally coming this afternoon so, hopefully, he can make the water clear.
The internet is extra slow today so I have gotten very little accomplished today and it is already 2:30pm. I am working on the garden journals and some cooking notebooks that I plan to have for sale in the Farm Store. Designing them would be a breeze if we had high speed internet but when you live out in the country, there is no high speed anything...
The sky is bright blue and the sun is so hot today. It is currently 106° with a lot of humidity.
Our 50% off sale in July is wrapping up. Starting at 7pm tonight, the sale will go down to 20% off if you buy a minimum of four packs of seeds. We have sold a lot of seeds and we have cleared out a lot of inventory. We will continue the JULYBLOWOUT sale but instead of saving 50%, you will save 20% on four or more packs of seeds. Still a significant savings. So you have the rest of today to take advantage of the 50% off sale.
Our plumber just arrived but I do not know why. Apparently, there is a commode problem in an employee bathroom. It seems like every day we have one or more contractors here.
The pond guy showed up at 4:50pm in the miserable heat of the day. He found out that there is no real filtration system. He will need to redo a lot including putting on a pond filter that is like a pool filter. He will try to fit us in at the end of the month for $2400.00 but we have to have an electrician come out first and pull the plugs out from under the gazebo so we can get to them. We will have to turn off the falls once a week and backwash. Right now, there are some year old dirty sponges under a very heavy rock at the top of the falls. All of that will need to be removed and changed, a lot of work.
It is 7:40pm now and I just changed the website sale. So here it is: If you buy four or more seed items, you can use code JULYBLOWOUT to get 20% off of your seed order.
There are not too many eggs. Matt collected them yesterday and dropped the bucket. They were all okay except one. Then he put them on the chicken AC unit and they fell off. All were smashed.
One of David's favorite July garden chores is pulling out the old, dead, and/or no-longer-producing plants and preparing the ground for the next planting in August. This is South Central Texas and it gets too hot here for things to grow this time of year. The problem is, the heat came over a month too early this year, back in June. Hopefully, it will cool down nicely in September and we will get a good fall garden.
Good Saturday morning! I had to go out early and unlock everything for our people who are working today. I fed the fish. I need to throw algae killer in the pond again a little later and then add more water. It was 106° yesterday and is supposed to get up that high again today.
I gave Pamela and Sue Ellen their pain pills and all of the indoor animals got fed.
David made us eggs. After I ate, I went out to feed the animals out back. Flies are all over the chicken coop. It is so nasty. Last year, we had these fly traps that stank so bad but I think I would rather have the bad smell than to have them swarming all over the place.
I got over to the store a bit late as David had me put some apples in the juicer. He wants to try making his own apple cider vinegar.
There was a couple in the store when I arrived. I put the money in the register but the internet would not connect. After a while, they were ready for checkout and I could not check them out. I called Shay to give them a tour. I finally got it hooked up and checked them out but it took an extra 30 minutes to do so.
It is a pretty slow day in the Farm Store. I made sure all of our outgoing orders are right. The mailman came and picked up the mail. I am filling the pond right now as it is down again.
David canned some squash and some watermelon rinds while I worked at the store. He also made some more jars of dill pickles.
We had several good sales today in the store. Once the store closed, we got ready to go to the Backyard Kitchen for a goodbye party for Patrice Wassing who headed up the Atascosa County Small Business meetings each month. She is moving away to Alabama. She will be growing and selling sunflowers over there using our seeds. We had a good time, eating burgers and visiting with a lot of folks. We said goodbye to Patrice. She has been helpful in getting the word out locally about our business.
We got home in time to see the second hour of Svengoolie. It was about this giant praying mantis that flew through the air, bigger than an airplane. It was hilarious.
If you have dogs in your yard, part of your monthly chores and part of July garden chores is to pick up the dog poo from your yard at least once a week. Some people don't. If you have livestock, you should be cleaning up their poo and such at least once a week. Some do it daily and that helps cut back on smell and flies in the extreme heat.
David just got back inside from spraying an organic fly spray that we got from our pest control guy. He said it dropped them all fast and I am talking hundreds of them. It says it is safe for animals. Let's hope so. David said he has to get more involved in July garden chores because the ones doing it just don't understand what all it entails. Our outdoor guys were terminated for doing a bad job so now we have a couple of our own team members out there each morning. But they are not outdoor professionals and they need leadership from someone who knows how to get it done.
July garden chores in this heat are no fun to do. Just feeding and watering the animals this morning was horrible because of the humidity and heat. I came in the house drenched all the way through. I had to clean up and put fresh clothes on to go over to the Farm Store to meet you. We open in 20 minutes. Come early and get the few eggs we have left.
Good Sunday morning. I have just had my first sip of coffee. David is still sleeping for a little while. He works hard. I slept pretty good, certainly better than on Friday night. I made coffee while being careful not to make much noise to awaken the puppies who would wake David up.
I finally got all of the indoor and outdoor animals fed. It is miserably humid out there. Then David and I made waffles for breakfast. I pulled out the waffle iron and put everything together in a bowl and stirred it. Then I poured it all into this pancake batter dispenser, plugged in the waffle iron and pre-heated it. David cooked the waffles in the iron while I cleaned up the kitchen a bit.
I got the dishes loaded up in the dishwasher and started some laundry. Then I decided to sit at my computer and fix the garden planners I am making. I had plain lined paper in them. I found some nice sheets with the words "seeds" and "transplants" and a date along with lines on the rest of the page so you can put the date you planted either seeds or seedlings and then put down all of the details you want. These will soon be ready for purchase from Amazon here or you can purchase them in the Farm Store or off of our website at the beginning of August. I have to wait for them to be printed. I have also created some recipe notebooks and some music notebooks with staff paper and guitar tabs. I have musicians in the family so it seemed perfectly natural to me to do that.
One of the garden planners comes in paperback or in hardback. It is gray. Then there are also a few plain lined paper garden journals that do not have the David's Garden Seeds® logo. Just look for the author's name to be Mrs. David's Garden Seeds®. That's me!
The day passed by quickly. I did manage to get in the pool late this afternoon. It felt great but it was 94° in the water and 106° outside. I managed to get a whole 12 eggs from the chickens today. They are laying less due to the extreme heat.
I have three dozen eggs in the Farm Store refrigerator for tomorrow.
David went outside and found that a lot of July garden chores are not getting done. Tomorrow he will make sure that all of the July garden chores are worked on.
Return from July Garden Chores to Our Fourth Year
Since 2009, over 1,500,000 home gardeners, all across the USA, have relied on David's Garden Seeds® to grow beautiful gardens. Trust is at the heart of it. Our customers know David's Garden Seeds® stocks only the highest quality seeds available. Our mission is to become your lifetime supplier of quality seeds. It isn't just to serve you once; we want to earn your trust as your primary supplier.
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Peppers and peas
And lots of yummy greens
You can't go wrong
With Squash This Long
At David's Garden Seeds
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Please like and subscribe on YouTube and come visit us at our Farm Store! The music on our TV ad was written, played, and sung by our son, Matthew Schulze. You can meet him when you come to the farm. He just might give you a tour. Ask him to grab a guitar and sing our jingle that he wrote.
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