Garden Update

Well it’s been a while since I’ve had some time to write an update.  Kids and other stuff have been keeping us quite busy.  The garden is tootin’ along great.  This morning I planted our new Earthbox with the last two tomato plants and put two eggplants in the garden.  At this point the garden is 100% planted except for successive planting stuff like soybeans and scallions.

I went around 2 days ago and sprayed all the cole crops heavily with BT and soap.  When we applied our floating row cover to the broccoli it wasn’t soon enough and we ended up with Imported Cabbage worms under the cover – Oy Vey!  Talk about a headache.  I’m hoping my BT application and the judicious use of my pinching fingers that we now have them under control.

We’ve been harvesting a LOT of lettuce but not so much that we can’t keep up with it.  We’ve also harvested broccoli twice and strawberries.  I also thinned some rutabagas the other night and they made a great addition to our salad.  From May 1st (the start of our harvesting) to yesterday we have harvested a total of 4 pounds from the garden!  We forgot to weigh some of the stuff we brought in and we’re bad for eating stuff outside straight from the garden. LOL

Now on to the pictures…

Can you spot the cat?  The tall plant is actually 3 parsnips that I’m letting go to seed.  They are 5 feet tall and just starting to open their flowers.  We also have 2 volunteer (All Blue) potato plants that came up in this bed.

Our pole beans are starting to climb.  I went out the other night and put up some twine for them.  In the front of this bed we have garlic chives and regular chives.  The covered area is 13 broccoli plants.  We also have spinach.

This picture has some of our bush beans.  Also kale, turnip, chard, lettuce, kohlrabis and some cukes.

This picture has our onions, haricot verts, leeks, scallions and sugarsnap and oregon giant snow peas.  Oh and one square of soy so far.

 

A backward glance at our garden.  I really wish I had budgeted some space for flowers this year.  I think when the lettuce and spinach finish in a couple of weeks that I’ll stick some flowers in for colour.

One of our Earthboxes.  You’ll notice the fill tube in the corner is getting ready for an automatic watering system we just need to finish the hook up. The tomato on the right is a Mortgage Lifter that we picked up at the local seed & feed store.  We have a total of 10 tomato plants in the Earthboxes.  I noticed this morning that in one bed we have a volunteer tomato plant coming up.  I think I’ll leave it because the other thing in the square will be done in a few weeks.

These are our blackberries.  They are going crazy.  I still haven’t found time to go trim them back.  They are sending shoot up all over the place – ugh :)  Buried under it to the right is our grape which finally has blossoms on it this year. Yeah!

Our Rhubarb is doing great.  Some of the leaves turned yellow and died but they seem to be perking up and getting lush.  It also looks like I need to add more straw for mulch since the dandelions are coming up around them.

 

Picture of our strawberry plants.  We did manage to get the fertilizer strip refreshed in it.  Took some fancy footwork but with Ev’s help we got it done.  We’ve been nibbling on ripe berries for about a week now. 

Our harvest of berries from yesterday.

Here is a snap of our front flower beds.  The area up close to the house still needs to fill out because we only just hacked off our hydrangeas and planted starts so it’s kind of bare at the moment. This is a mix of poppies that I seeded late last summer and they over wintered.

First May update

The garden has been sprouting nicely the past couple of weeks, urged on by a great deal of rain.  Unfortunately, there’s been a rather lackluster germination rate, but it’s nothing that a little re-seeding hasn’t been able to help with.

Here’s some photos we took last weekend.

Lettuce starts that we bought at Alexander’s Lawn & Garden have already yielded a good number of salads already, it’s nice to have fresh greens at last.  So far, we’ve had almost 2 lbs of lettuce and a lot of salads over the past week.

In particular, our peas are growing well.  We’re growing three varieties, Oregon Giant Snow Peas, Sugarsnap Snap Peas, and Sugar Ann Snap Peas.  The Sugarsnap have been doing rather well, shooting right up to grab the trellis we planted them by.  

By contrast, the Sugar Ann peas didn’t have a great germination rate, though the ones that are sprouting are growing fairly well.

Our brambles out in the side yard are doing remarkably well. The one blackberry is getting very large, as you can see, and the grape is looking very healthy.

Since these photos were taken,there’s been a lot more growth and amazing stuff.  For right now, however, we’re about to go out and fix up our tomatoes in the same Earthboxes we used last year.

I’ll post again later this weekend with more updates on how our various plants are doing.