Mid-August Garden Update

It has been a hot summer with what little rain we got coming in fits and starts. Four inches here, a half inch there, and plenty of sunshine. This meant lots of watering, and I was nearly as wet as the garden when I was done. It would have been nice of all that rain we had back in the spring had been spaced out a bit.

The second run of beans is still producing and we had a great dinner last night of fresh squash and beans, and a pepper from the garden cooked in with some fried potatoes. I should also mention that fresh-from-the-garden-parsley is amazing. Now I know that parsley actually has a fragrance. It was so good in my parsley, garlic, anchovy and olive oil sauce for our skirt steak. Yum! If you don't grow parsley, you should.

The squash have had a good run, but they are winding down and will soon be removed to start the fall garden. 

Hubby's tomato now has 5 tomatoes on it and we are hoping they will survive to ripen. Did I mention we are not seasoned gardeners? In my other bed, I have three zucchini and another pepper. The tag says it is ancho/poblano. Could be one or the other or a mixture. Doesn't matter to me...it's all good. After the yellow summer squash, I am looking forward to some late summer zucchini.

Still to come are beets and maybe some more radish, and I hope to get onions and garlic in around the first of October.

What's in your garden now?


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Can You Believe It's Already July?

So where does the time go? The older I get the more often I ask this question. Time is flying by faster than a spaceship from childhood cartoons. That said, the garden is growing by leaps and bounds. At least the squash is. It is finally producing! We picked two and I counted nearly a dozen more tiny ones just set on. Thank goodness, I was beginning to think I was the only poor schmuck on the planet who couldn't grow squash. And guess what? That third (and last) row of radish actually produced a few radishes for hubby's dinner.

That may all be in jeopardy because while I was watering this afternoon with the hose attached to the newly reconnected spigot, I was startled to notice that the tomato was somewhat shorter than yesterday. Now wait a minute, they are supposed to grow upward, right? I looked closer to see that the very top had been chewed off (at least they left the blossoms). Then the beans...nearly a half dozen of my beans had been chewed off as well.

Now folks, this garden isn't in the country. Nope, it has been in the city for nearly 30 years and even when it was squarely in the county, there were rarely ever any wildlife spotted except for the usual birds, hoppy toads, as we called them, and the occasional garter snake.

Well, it appears that we may have deer munching our veggies. We've heard about deer sightings in the neighborhood, but haven't seen them. We have seen deer where we live a short distance away and also in the city, twice this year late in the evening.

Whatever it is at least they haven't show a preference for squash...yet. Fingers crossed.

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Late June Garden Update

Hi there and welcome back to the late June garden update. We are neophyte gardeners, and are feeling our way through with the help of videos and articles on gardening, and what I remember from "helping" my mom years ago. Getting a late start did not help either.

I started with some herbs in pots, and most of them are still surviving, maybe even thriving (pictured below is my sage), although still too thick for optimum growth. I plan to thin and transplant as I figure out where they should go. The radish did absolutely zilch, but the beans are producing nicely, and we have had at least four decent batches for dinner.

We created a raised bed for additional planting, and so far have several squash, a pepper, a tomato, more radish, another row of green beans and some green onions I got from the store, used the tops in cooking and cut off the bottoms and planted. Yes, you can regrow vegetables from cuttings.

Here are some pictures of the garden's progress.

Here we have the bed after we have added a layer of leaf mulch and starting to spread the layer of top soil (6 bags). According to what I read, you can either mix all your ingredients together or layer them. We chose to use the layering approach.

Next we have the layer of Black Kow, aka manure (2 bags). Back when we were planting the potato buckets, we could not find Black Kow, so we made do with a different brand. By the way, the taters seem to be doing fine and it looks like buds are setting on. I figure they've been planted about 6 weeks now.

Our top layer was 6 bags of garden soil. We got this on sale earlier in the season for $2 a bag. Sometimes we do actually plan ahead.

Here it is all pretty, leveled out and ready to plant. Now what?

Here it is now with the squash on the left, the tomato in the cage, the beans at the top right.There is also a sweet pepper, some onions and more radish. Obviously, there is more room and I have some hot peppers in pots - my second attempt to start peppers from seeds. The first were Hungarian hot wax peppers, but none of those seeds sprouted. I must have had a bad package of seed, because everything else came up.

Right now there are little peppers, the beans (second crop) are coming along nicely and the onions are sprouting. I should have onions in a couple weeks. The squash are blooming, but as yet have none have set on. I doubt that this planting of radish will yield any edibles either. They are an early crop and I knew that going in, but we had a lot of rain and an out-of-state wedding to attend when we would have been setting up the garden. 

Our thumbs are not the best shade of green, but we decided we would, once again, like to try our hand at growing something besides weeds. I'll pop back in later for another show and tell.

Bonus picture - first crop of beans (both green and yellow, aka wax beans).

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Beans, Bugs and More!

This is my bean crop. These two sections are the yellow (wax) beans and the first to germinate. Looking good so far! The radish are the first row (at the bottom of the following two pics). 

This section is my Blue Lake bush beans. A little slower than the yellow ones, but over achievers as they have nearly caught up with the others. Actually they weren't that far behind, and sprouted quicker than expected. 

The sage is also starting to come up. Wish me and these tender young veggies good luck.

This cute fellow is the Eastern Eyed Click Beetle. He had accidentally hitched a ride on hubby's back and got unceremoniously swatted to the ground before I knew what he was. Fortunately, he survived to fly away. They are harmless to humans!

This lovely creature is a Luna Moth who was hanging out on the wall next to the light fixture. What a nice surprise since we don't see them very often.

Here are some of the strawberries I transplanted. It looks like they are going to make it.

I won't bore you with the incremental progress of my garden, but will update when things ramp up a bit. Until then, happy gardening.



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Herbal Update and a Butterfly

Seen in the early morning...well about 8:30. That's still early, right?  Isn't it beautiful. I am thinking maybe newly hatched and drying it's wings because it was sitting so still on the wall. I love butterflies, and am hoping to see some Monarchs this year.

Swallowtail

The oregano, thyme and parsley are coming along nicely. I may have made a mistake planting them as I did, scattering seed in the pots. Transplanting could be tricky, or I could just thin to a few per pot. The replanted basil (not pictured) has started coming up, too. At last check, the sage hadn't sprouted, but they were supposed to take longer.

I'll try and get some shots of my beans and radish for a later post. Until next time, happy gardening!


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