Friday, July 9, 2010

Garden Update

I have to say that I’m pretty happy with the way my garden is progressing, despite the trials and tribulations it’s endured…

I am very happy with my tomatoes so far. This year I tried a different kind – I normally went with Early Girl and bought the plants already started from the nursery… This year, after reading some reviews, decided to try Celebrity tomatoes – and I started them from seed… the first time I’ve tried that The plants are looking great and this year I did not procrastinate staking and tying them. Usually I wait until the plants are too big and I never get them to stand up right… this year I put in stakes while they were still small and I’ve been diligent about tying them as they grow – yay me! I’m seeing some fruit , but they are small so I think it will be quite a while before I starting eating any fresh tomatoes and review the difference between Early Girl and Celebrity tomatoes…

Tomatoes

My corn is doing well too - they say it should be ‘knee-high by 4th of July’… I think I’m right on track so far

Knee High!

Growing the cucumbers with the corn seems to be working well, too. The cukes are definitely keeping the weeds down in the bed. I think that once the corn gets a little taller, it will be easier to see what’s going on at the ‘ground level’. I did find a perfect cucumber already!

First cucumber of the season!

The cukes are starting to spread outside the bed, but so far I’m OK with it. We’ll see what happens as the season progresses…

Going exploring...

The green peppers don’t seem to be doing that great, but I think that it’s because they are right next to all the dill and the dill is blocking a lot of the afternoon sun for them. Next year I’ll have to keep that in mind…

Peppers & Beets Mmmmmm - Dill!

The beets I replanted are coming up nicely, and I think that barring any unfortunate circumstances, I just may get some beets this year!

Baby beets

I’m getting a ton of sweet peas. The plants are huge and have broken some of the strings that I had put up to hold them upright. I’ll probably harvest most of them this weekend and they will be done. I think I’m going to try and replant some more in the fall when things cool down again and see what happens.

Peas, lettuce & cabbage

I definitely planted too many cabbage plants the inside of the pea bed and they are way too close together. I’m going to let them do their thing , but I’ll know better for next year…

I didn’t get many green beans because the evil baby bunnies ate the flowers, but the rutabagas did great. I’ve been pulling about a half dozen every week for the past few weeks. My Mom said that they were really good. I’m going to pull the last ten or so that are left, along with the green bean plants. I’m going to replant the bed again with more rutabagas and green beans and see if I can get another crop before the end of the growing season…

Green Beans Rutabaga Rutabagas

I don’t have much hope for the watermelons – they got started way too late. I don’t think that there will be enough of a growing season left for anything to ripen. If the plants even get that far.

Watermelon

But, I do have high hopes for my pumpkins… I tried growing giant pumpkins a few years ago with limited success, but this year I seem to be doing good with them. I suspect that the abundance of chicken fertilizer they’ve been getting has a lot to do with this So far I count at least ten pumpkins in the making. I really hope to get a whole ton of pumpkins – I have plans for them (rubbing my hands together here with an evil laugh) devil

Baby pumpkins  :)

No comments: