Weeding, weeding

Today was a fairly warm but mild day so we were able to work quite a bit in the garden doing lots of weeding, or getting our plants "out of purgatory" as my Mom, Serena likes to say. We have a very healthy cucumber plant in our garden which is pictured above!

In the morning Adam enjoyed coming into the garden to pick as many berries as he could. He picked a couple of boysenberries which are plentiful and almost ripe, but still a bit tart. He picked and ate the last of the remaining raspberries as well as a small handful of blueberries.

Maybe Next Year:

As we were weeding we thought that the red Russian kale and our dragon's tongue wax beans never came up. However, as I edit this post on Monday, July 19th my Mom has discovered that they had come up! A real disappointment was that only a few of our corn plants came up. It will be a miracle if we even get one ear of corn under these circumstances. Also, we only got one of each kind of melon to survive. We'll have to see how the weather is next year and perhaps try some other strategies to grow things.

On another sad note, the bees in the hive that we had near the garden have died. They had done a lot of work on building the honeycomb and preparing the hive for honey but we speculate that the queen may have died and the hive couldn't continue. We'll try again next year.

Blooms:


Many plants in our garden are blooming which is very encouraging! Another row of potatoes is blooming. Our tomato plants look very healthy and green and have many blooms on them. Also, our cucumbers, zucchini and pepper plants are also starting to bloom. This is a very good sign and tells us that crops are on their way!

My Mom fertilized many of the plants this week including the brussels sprouts, cabbage and broccoli. All of these plants are getting much bigger now that we have weeded around them. They grew a lot in one week because they had a lot more room to grow. Also, my Mom staked all of the tomato plants.

This coming week we need to put the poles up for the pole beans that we planted to make sure they have something to grow on. We'll also continue to weed as much as we can and get the garden cleaned up.

Suburban Garden Report:


Our sharecropper pumpkin plant has really taken off! It has runners going in every direction and has several baby pumpkins on it already. The sweet potatoes planted next to it are also doing well. I have been careful not to water them too much unless it has been particularly hot.



The strawberries are starting to produce a new crop of berries and they are growing quite large. Also, the rhubarb continues to put out new stalks! I am very happy with my tiny garden in the backyard.

Have a great week!