State of the Garden...17 July 2008

I know, I know; I haven't updated the garden in total for several weeks. With Boscoe, it's been just too busy to get all that is happening in there down at one time.

But, things are a moving and it is way overtime for a full report with lots of pictures.

First, the bugs. I started to get a nasty case of aphids last month so I decided to see what an order of ladybugs would do to them. I ordered them and a bag of red wrigglers for the soil and my compost pile (I'll write more on them later). I released half the ladybugs right away and put the rest in the fridge for later. Sure enough, I had not an aphid in sight within 24 hours! Just a few days ago, I released the other half when I saw evidence of more aphids starting on the eggplant. Again, not an aphid in sight now. But, also not a ladybug in sight either. They just don't seem to hang around after supper! Here's a nice shot of them.


For those who remember, I had a small problem with my peppers. The blooms were simply falling right off or even if they fertilized, the little nublets of pepper fell off. It was very depressing. It looked like I might have over-nitrogened some of them because of the heavy leaf growth and others were simply not liking all the sun. I moved them and voila..pepper heaven for many of them. Here is my Spanish Spice pepper showing some lovely 8 inch hanging fruit. Some of the bells are now following suit. The Godfathers and the poblanos are also producing really heavily right now. Right now I'm frantically looking for ways to preserve the bounty for later.


My first eggplant came off the other day too! It is quite small but I understand that is normal for the first one. I'm not worrying too much. There's more growing. Here is a snap of my confusing yellow squash plant. It has no growing tip at all. It produced one male and one female flower and they made one single perfect squash. I'm letting it grow unchecked to see what happens to it. Just out of curiosity :)


And here is my experiment in lettuce. Since I've never actually seen one go to seed, I decided to let one of each kind bolt to see what it looks like. It is quite attractive, isn't it?


Here is a nice picture of my pickings for the other night. It was just enough to enjoy a lovely grilled dinner of eggplant and peppers with a small carrot salad and sliced tomato...yummm. Those Spanish peppers are over 8 inches long just to give you an idea of scale.


This is my largest Butternut squash plant. The leaves are huge and the bloom gigantic. I'm confused about them though. It looks like all the blooms and buds are male. Do they do like Zucchini and produce males first and then females or what? Any info is welcome to this squash newbie.


This bad picture is an early morning shot of my squash bed. Those large and tall bush like plants in the back are actually my Stevia plants. Amazing how huge they are getting, but I'm sure not complaining.


Bed One here has changed over the past month in a big way. Newly planted bush beans and edamame have taken the place of peas and carrots and the tomato plants are producing well, even if they look a bit ragged. Gigi approves as you can see. Beds 2 and 3 are equally changed with more beans of various kinds and peppers transplanted from the smaller pots in the container garden.


This was a short tour and I didn't include flowers this time, shame on me, but I'll hopefully catch up soon. I'd love to see pictures of everyone else's garden.

To finish off, here is a nice picture of Boscoe's shaved behind and leg. His incision looks good and his butt is funny enough to share. :) Happy gardening everyone!

State of the Garden - April 29, 2008

Wow, folks, things are a growing! Yes, we have had casualties on the way and they were mourned, but the good far outweighs the bad.

Let's start with the good stuff.

The Dogwood is in full bloom and it is glorious. For only being a few years old, it is really doing exceptionally well. When I was young we had a big old Dogwood in our front yard and I liked to sit and look out the big picture window at it blowing in the breeze. This brings that memory up and is a pick-me-up after a long day at work.


My blueberries are a combination of good and bad. I dug them up from the place I had them because they just weren't getting the kind of light they needed and because it was low enough to the ground to be rabbit bait.

A good part of the early fruit and blossoms are history, but luckily for me I moved them into giant containers into the light and in full view from my window. It is too high for Mr. Rabbit, old fart that he is, and in a bad spot for the birds to do their swooping thievery. So while I don't have many, I do have some fruit that has set and I may yet get that hard won handful of fruit!


My only other fruity fruit is a grape vine that I really had no expectation for this year. Transplanting is hard on these guys and even though I bought an older vine and so, technically old enough to fruit, it shouldn't have really. But lo and behold, I have a single bunch of what looks like very tiny grapes. Yehaw! I'm going to protect them like an armoured truck if they are, in fact, grapes.


Those blossoms I noted last week on one of my tomatoes plants are still blooming strong! Since it is so early, I sort of expected to lose those first ones but the stem is thickening up and you know what that means!


My peas are going crazy and climbing all over the place. They cling to each other, the poles, other plants...me! Yikes. I'm not sure if I was supposed to sucker these or what but they have way more than one little climbing arm.


Oh yes, there are bumps under those beets! They are growing well in the first square planted on 23 March and there are visible humps under the foliage now where the beet is growing. I'm thrilled!




The first square of carrots are doing well. A few of them never came up at all and I think that is a significant issue with square foot gardening. I'll get into that some other time though. If you notice, one of these is not like the other. We don't know what that odd fellow is, but it is exactly where we planted the carrot seed. So either this is one clever weed or there was a funky seed in the carrot packet. Either way, we're letting it grow until we figure out what it is just for fun. It may well be the only intentionally watered and fertilized and weeded weed in existence! LOL



Even the last bed planted, the little one in the side yard, is moving along at a good clip. All things here were planted after the main beds and based on staggering harvests for things like bush beans that go all at once. Notice there are some missing though. Only 3 of the 9 Edamame in the lower right square (Burpee Green Pearl) actually sprouted or passed sprout stage. They were very weak and very poor sprouters. I replanted a couple more but they aren't showing at all yet so maybe those failed too. Also in the middle right column only 5 of the 9 Carnival Pepper Mix, again Burpee, came up. Also a couple of carrots didn't sprout of the 16 in that square. Two of the peas in the middle left column got pecked out by birds right before my eyes but the other 6 are going like gangbusters.

I think it is somewhat ironic that the far more expensive mail-order Burpee seeds did significantly poorer than the ones I bought at Lowe's, regardless of brand. Isn't that supposed to be the opposite?

Now for some of the bad. First off, we had a good rain again and this is the mud in one part of my yard. It is high traffic but it is a natural depression from a tree removal. Nice, huh. Note the ratty state of my Wellies? Those are my absolute favorite ones and until i can find the exact same ones, I'm keeping em!

A few weeks ago I noticed that one of my Stevia plants was wilting and wasn't going to make it. Well I went to chop it down and perhaps save the leaves shortly after I first wrote on it and made a yucky discovery. It has some kind of grayish powder on the base of it. Gross. Totally freaked me out. I think it was either Powdery Mildew or Gray Mold. Either way, I dug it out carefully and all the dirt around it and checked all the others carefully. About a week later I had to prune out a part of another Stevia but so far so good. No others affected. I have fungicide at the ready but am loathe to use it, so I'll save that for a last ditch save if necessary.

And that isn't the end of my pest woes. I was really banking on that whole beginner's luck thing but it was a sucker bet because that just doesn't work. :) Nah, really it isn't too bad. It is just a bit intimidating when you aren't familiar with them.

Here is a cauliflower and my unknown plant (which I still think is a brussel sprout) and you may notice that they have obvious Leaf Miner trails in them. Well, that sent me into a state of panic! I ran like my hair was on fire in for all my books. The first one gave me a great picture to identify the leaf miner, but that wasn't enough. I went through all of them to be absolutely sure that it was. Am I sure? Nope. Novices...aren't we fun?

Anyway, I did what the book said and just clipped off the parts that had the trails. Et voila. No more leaf miner. For now anyway. We'll see.

That same day I saw what I think were aphids and white flies on one of my tomatoes in the side yard. I immediately went to Lowe's and spent a fortune on every organic remedy I could find. I like the pyrethrin stuff. I sprayed and problem gone. Since I go over each plant every day I knew for sure they had to have arrived after I left for work that morning. They hadn't even unpacked, let alone gotten comfortable before I blasted them.

I found 2 rain barrels and ordered the downspout diverter so I'll be ready for summer conservation of water, I think. Combine that with good growth on most and a potentially successful interdiction against my first pest and I'm feeling pretty good! All said, I think thing are going awesome.