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!

Nuts to Crows

It's been a while since we updated this blog about our gardening. Since then many of our seeds have come up. Overall, our garden is off to a great start, finally!! However, the crows have cleared out a section of sunflowers, corn and beans that were adjacent to each other. That was our second planting of corn, so it looks like we won't have very much corn this year although we are hoping for a third section of corn to come up. It is too early to tell if they have eaten that too!

On the positive side, the tomatoes are starting to bloom so that is very promising. Also, one type of potato is flowering- our blue ones. We noticed some of the areas that were fertilized with the aged chicken manure are way ahead in their growth compared to the ones that have not been fertilized yet. (You can see in the photos below that the top cucumber is much smaller than the bottom one). Many of the rows of beans have come up very well and our squash plants are coming along nicely.


The weeds have really taken over because it rained so long this year that we weren't able to get in there to weed as much as usual. And, now that the weather is fairly hot the roots are hard to dig up. On the other hand, we got out there for a while in the morning and this afternoon to weed and have made a lot of progress. We concentrated on clearing the rows of Brussels sprouts, brocoli and cabbage and we also got the blackberry and thistle plants out before they can go to seed.

Projects this week are to stake the tomatoes and spread the chicken manure to fertilize more of the garden. The chicken fertilizer is decomposing nicely so it won't burn the plants- it is already growing mushrooms in it!


The weather has been pretty hot this week- in the high 80's and 90's here. The boysenberries are looking pretty promising as far as having quite a few berries on them. Their leaves are a bit spotted due to all of the rain we had in May and June. Some of the raspberries got a similar blight although there are some berries on the vines as well. Adam enjoyed picking and eating some of the raspberries as you can see in the photo above!

Quick Suburban Garden Report:

This week has been very, very hot in the suburbs as well. As a result, our garden is doing very well. I have harvest a lot of rhubarb to make pies, so new stalks are growing quickly on the plants. Also, there is a second crop of strawberries coming on to our plants.


The sharecropper pumpkin is doing great! As you can see it has very big blossoms like the one in the photo above. There will be several pumpkins to choose from this Halloween! The sweet potatoes are getting a bit of new growth on them as well and are looking healthy!

Here's to summer!