Garden Update....Meh

 If anyone is interested here is how my garden is doing.

These photos were taken on June 12th....

Green Beans plants on the left, baby  Bok Choy on the right.

The barrel of lettuce going gangbusters.

12 Tomato plants about halfway up their cages.

And 4 Collard plants hanging on.

And the same plants on June 21st.....

The Green Bean plants now have buds and blossoms.  The Bok Choy bigger and needs thinning out.

The seeds planted on the other side of this bed never germinated but there are a few volunteer Morning Glories up over there.

The tomato plants are now about at the top of their cages and there are many blossoms hidden among all the greenery.

The Collards are much bigger and starting to flourish.  One Green Bean seed sprouted in this bed but none of the Yellow Squash germinated.  There are also 3 volunteer tomato plants coming up now in there.

I didn't photograph the lettuce barrel this time.  It's doing well and I harvested my first crop of lettuces this past weekend for dinner one night.

In the front bed a nefarious chipmunk is digging plants up.  So far he/she has taken out a Celosia plant, a Pansy plant and 1 of the Sunflower plants we grew from seed.  The only things it's leaving alone are the Coleus plants.  I read that chipmunks will eat Coleus.  Weird.  I guess this one doesn't have a taste for them. ;-)

I scaled back our gardening efforts this year due to no enthusiasm for it lately and focusing on getting the house ready to sell instead.  If the house sells before the harvests come in we've done all this work for nothing so that's sort of squelched my desire for gardening.

Are you growing anything?  How is your garden doing?

Sluggy

Sluggy & The Sad State of Her Garden

Well the garden this year has been neglected and most probably will continue to be a half-assed effort.

Right off, when the furry little critters(evil chipmunks)started digging up our seeds, I didn't replant.
Therefore, there will be no squash, beans or cucumbers harvested from my garden this year.

Then I went away for 2+ weeks.
Usually when I am not here, cracking the whip on the other members of the family lovingly encouraging & reminding the rest of the family to water, weed and take care of the garden , nothing gets done......well, except the plants get choked out or die of thirst.

Here is the state of things right before I left, mid July......

Little tiny maters.

Some of the cauliflower plants were doing well......but no heads developing yet.....

My Morning glory vines just starting to climb the bird feed pole.

And other Morning Glories had been "clear cut" by some midsized critters.  Blast!

And the Japanese Beetles had just arrived to eat up the Morning Glories that survived the clear cutting/munching furry critters.

I get back late July and by last Friday, here is what was observed in the garden.....


Some cauliflower plants still hanging in there, a bit beetle eaten.....

 

What you do NOT see in this photo is the cauliflower plant that was photographed above(the 3rd photo down in this post), before I left town.  It was here when I left and now there is no trace of it!  No trace but a small impression in the soil were it was located before some large furry critters pulled the whole thing up, roots and all and carted it off for dinner!

Some maters, still not growing much.....

A tomato plant by the Morning Glory vines, both having been clear-cut Again! by some furry critter(a deer I am betting due to the reach).
Grrrr!
Hubs never put the fencing up around the garden this year.....sigh

The lone red tomato, observed last Friday.   I didn't pick it then and by Sunday it was gone.....your welcomed furry critters.....I hope you choked on it!

The only item the critters haven't touched(yet!)are my onions and they are going like gangbusters.....

My solace in the debacle that my garden is quickly turning into has been my Morning Glories......

See the grains of pollen on the petals in this shot?.....

Oh lookie!
More maters.......

I just hope I can keep the furry critters away from these.  They are up on the deck so I have a fighting chance at least.

How is your garden growing?

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