Garden Update

Last time I showed the garden it looked like this in early June.....

 Along the back deck

 one oak barrel with lettuce, oregano and 3 volunteer tomato plants

2 basil plants, 2 Japanese eggplant plants and morning glory seeds sprouting

Well a month later, it looks like this.........

 Along the back deck and the barrel with lettuce, tomato and oregano

The other barrel with eggplant, basil and morning glories.  Two more volunteer tomato plants also emerged in this barrel and I left them there.

 We've got 4 baby eggplants now.

 Some baby yellow squash and I found a BIG zucchini yesterday too.

Lots of baby tomatoes as well.

The morning glories seem to have seeded themselves all along the back deck last Fall and I had vines mixed in among all the veggies now.  The heaviest concentration is on the one end of the deck in the garden and in the oak barrel and the vines are just now reaching the bird feeder poles and climbing high.

I'll update what we've harvested along with a recipe in a later post....probably this weekend.

Sluggy

In Other News......

Hubs picked the first zucchini of the season 2 days ago........

It went from 5 inches long to 12+ inches in 2 days!
I forgot how fast these babies grow with the optimum weather.

If I am feeling up to it mr. zuke will be starring in a Blueberry Zuke Cake very soon.  8-)

Sluggy

This Year's Garden...1st Update

I know I haven't blogged much(if any!)about our garden this year.
I don't know....I guess I am just not much 'into' the garden this year.

Here's a shot of the side bed from April 30th when we were just getting to cleaning out the beds and prepping the soil....

Usually we have nothing to harvest until mid July at the earliest because of our climate/zone.
Well, the 2 weeks of unseasonably HOT weather in early June sped up the rate of germination and growth a LOT!
We've been picking radishes for weeks!

I've got them coming out of my ears at this point.lol

And here is a shot of the same side bed taken two weeks ago....

A few tomato plants, some squashy/cuke type plants(I don't even remember what kinds....see what I mean about I'm not into it this year!lol) and a few bean plants.

We are having a devil of a time getting the bean plants to grow.  We've planted different kinds(bush and vine type)in all the different bed locations with little success.  Hubs sewed some into the wooden barrels also and those were doing great!
Until a critter found them and had a munchfest. bleh

 Hubs thinks one of the resident bunnies is decimating the bean plants since we know that the bunnies have jumped INTO the wooden barrels in the past.  But if the bunnies are doing this, explain why just the tops of the bean plants are being eaten, like someone taking a weedwacker to the plants and leaving the lower/bottom foliage and plant intact?  I think it's a taller animal, like a deer, walking through the yard and eating the tops of the bean plants.
Either way, our bean plants are not going to produce any beans this year.  *sigh*

Doesn't this shot look very lush and promising?
It is.
But it's all WEEDS not veggies!lol

And we got our first blossom on the eggplant plants 2 weeks ago.  See the lavender flower on the left in the photo?  I don't know if it will produce a fruit however since I haven't see any bees around yet to pollinate stuff.  The tomato plants in the backyard bed have golf ball sized tomatoes as of this week so I know the bees are around.
I hope I don't have to resort to playing bee and go from bloom to bloom with a paintbrush on the eggplant and squash blossoms. ;-)

Here's something I do that you might find unusual.
Lettuces are an early Spring crop.  You are suppose to plant it early and it dies back by mid summer usually.
Since we can't plant an early crop of lettuces/greens while the weather is still coolish here due to our climate, I sew the lettuce seeds among the cuke and squash plant seeds at the same time I sew the cuke/squash seeds.
This way, by the time the weather gets too warm for the lettuces(the hot weather that makes your lettuce wilt, dry up and die), the squash leaves have grown large enough to shield the lettuce from full sun.  The lettuce continues to grow well into August.

Here's my squash type plants....

 But move the leaves back and look closer....

 See my salad greens!

That's my diversity garden bed. 8-)

How is your garden doing?

Sluggy

Garden June 18th Update.....22 Days

With this unseasonably warm weather for June, the garden is starting to take off!
I snapped these photos on Friday, 12 days after the last set of pictures I took.

You can see the tomato plants here have shot up.....they need cages already.
This is what they looked like 12 days earlier....

The eggplant plants are just hanging in there.....

These tomato plants are not growing as fast as the ones at the other end of the bed.  Less sunlight and the soil is not as nice....

The green beans and squash/zuke plants have started coming in at the front of the house.....

And here is the end of the front bed....

The holes in the center of this shot are where the evile chipmunks have dug up the sunflower seeds every time I replanted them, dang them!!
Something buglike has been eating on the collard plants on the right in the photo.  I need to make up some soapy spray to drive them off.....those leaves are for MY MUNCHING Pleasure, not yours so bug off!lol
I guess I'll replant some of the cuke plants I need to thin out in the back bed and put them in here.

More bean plants and the salad greens spottily coming in....

Here is what the salad greens looked like 12 days earlier for comparison.  You'll notice the green beans weren't 'up' yet....

The aforementioned cuke plants.  #1 son sowed these and I do believe every single seed took!  40 cuke plants in the space of oh....3 feet!lol

These collard plants the bugs haven't dined on...yet!lol

And the cauliflower plants just about ready to start heading....

Here is what the collards and cauliflower looked like 12 days past....

Notice how the weeds have begun to take over too......ugh.  I have a very hard time bending down and weeding this bed as it has a definite slope and my old body has a hard time keeping my balance while bending over to weed.  I may need to look for some kind of weeding tool with a long handle.....I used one at the CSA we use to belong to but it's not a cheap tool.

So how is your garden growing?
Are you getting any good eats out of it yet?

Sluggy

Garden June 6th Update.....10 Days

Because of our location, we are not able to have a longer growing season or even garden year round like other parts of the country.  Man, if I lived someplace that was warm year round I'd be a growing fool...instead of just a plain fool!lol

The best way to live frugally foodwise, if you have the climate and a little land is to keep a garden.  I don't care if you think you have a black thumb, anyone can grow something!  I truly believe that.
You may not be P. Allen Smith or the world's most knowledgeable horticulturist but everyone can find something they can grow and eat.

Some seeds are pretty forgiving and fool-proof....just throw em down and even if you ignore them(and the skies provide rain when you forget to water them) and the bugs don't chew their way through everything, you'll end up with something to eat.  Imagine if you make any kind of effort to fend off the bugs, water and nurture these little seeds, what you could accomplish! ;-)

I am a lackluster gardener.  I like to garden but my old decrepit body does not, so I like my gardening simple and I don't put a big effort into it.
We don't have acreage here, we have about 1/3 of an acre lot.  We've got a deck over part of the land, drainage ditches & underground buried power lines in other parts of the land and an above ground pool taking up more valuable real estate.  Take away the areas with large shade trees and there isn't much ground for gardening but we use what we have.

Seriously, if you don't garden but you have a little plot of land or even a pot of soil, get a packet of seeds and try growing something this summer. ;-)


Here are some piccies I snapped last weekend(June 6th) of the garden.  10 days out so it's still early here and not much to see....lol
The butternut, peppers and marigolds in the front....still no sign from the sunflower seeds.

Here's the side bed on June 6th....

Peppers doing ok.  The tomato plants have blooms already!   Here's what the tomoatoes looked like on May 26th....

You can tell by comparison the pepper plants have done squat.....lol

More tomatoes and marigolds.  This end of the bed has worse soil and less sun.  I've manured and I'll give them 'fish tea' so we'll see how they do...
DH sewed zuke, squash and bush bean seeds in the middle 3rd of this bed Sunday so nothing to see there yet.

Now to the back bed.....

Tomatoes grew some....

And the Cauliflower on the right has started growing.  DH planted the eggplant on the right in the photo and they are holding their own.  Here's what the cauliflower looked like on May 26th...

Marked improvement with the cauliflower.

And I'm glad to see that the salad greens #1 son and I sewed are starting to pop up!  It was only a matter of 4 days or so for them to germinate and break the surface.....we'll have salad in a few weeks...yay!!

Here's what our salad greens part of the bed looked like last summer at it's peak in mid-July....the greens sort of took over due to the wet and cool summer we had last year and just wouldn't die!lol

Last but not least, here is a planter with some leftovers that didn't fit into the beds(peppers, a butternut and a yellow squash?).  Not much growth yet but they aren't dead so I am happy with that.lol

Looks like it's time to get the fencing up though.  Our resident rabbit(who lives under the shed)has been eye-ing the plants..... 8-(

Sluggy