4th of july update

Well, I hope that everyone has a great 4th of July. As we are truely into summer now I thought that I would provide an update on my garden as they say you might have first tomato by now. Well I am a little dissappointed that I don't have ripe tomato by the 4th but will soon. Right now we have over 75 green tomatoes even a few that are as big as a softball but nothing ripe yet. Our squash is coming along but nothing harvested yet. The zuke and other summer squash can't even find a small fruit on them yet but plants are still looking good with lots of flowers so still hopefull. I have one pepper nearly ripe and lots starting out. We ate our first cucumber of the season although it was only about ping pong ball size. It was good just small. We will have onions and garlic til they rot. We will have to harvest a good portion of the onions soon as many tops have fallen over. I am sure that we will be giving away onions and still have more than we can eat, with 600 onions we would have to eat more than 2 a day for a year. We have the first signs of silks on our corn. We also have a few butternut squash. We have a small cantelope and 3 small watermelons. Our lettuce has turned bitter so time to pull it up. We have been harvesting berries strawberries, blueberries, and wineberries. Peas are done until fall. Beans 2 of three varieties have beans on them at least a few. Still no beans on the Kentucky Wonder a green bean. No sign of either brocolli or Romanesco heads. Both Sugar pumpkins and Giant Pumkin have flowers but no sign of fruit yet. Basil is best I have ever tasted. Finding other uses for fresh grown dill. Already harvested the Red Russett potatoes. The Yukon gold even though being still under attack are still hanging in there. The kohlrabi should finish the harvest before too long as they are cold weather plants. Chard is growing great. The carrots are still small but tasty. We have succession planted radishes and carrots. Our aspargus planted this year is tall and spindly. We are going to replant in deeper soil in the fall. First year is a no go for asparagus anyhow. We lost all of our bon bon squash to bugs need to replant. the attack of the bugs now we are battling at least 5 bugs, potato beetles, cucumber beetles, Tomato horn worms, squash beetles and cabbage worms. Well that is where our garden stands as of right now. Pictures coming next week.

Busy in the garden

Well things have been pretty busy with our garden. We pulled up about half of our Garlic and have harvested 21 heads so far. Our Egyptian Onions are looking very good and have many little onions up top. Our Regular onions are growing like crazy as well as just about everything in the garden. Right now our tomatoes have little tomatoes onalmost every plant. They are also liking the warmer weather that we have had lately. The peppers are all starting to look much better again I think that they like the warmer weather. Although not a single seed o the seedless watermelons germinated we do have plants from the pollinators. We also have a volunteer pumpkin from last year that we transplanted that seems to be growing well. Our Giant Pumpkin is starting to outgrow the box so will soon be spilling over like we wanted. We did have a massive attack of the Colorado potato beetle and lost one of our build as you grow potatoes. We only got 1.6 pounds and about 15 smallish potatoes from the Russet Red. Hopefully the Yukon gold will produce a better harvest. They also have been attacked by potato beetles but not as bad. Our strawberries are all doing well as are our raspberries out front. Our squash are all growing just not as fast as you would expect. We also have been harvesting peas a few times a week.

Gardening in the Rain

Well today was our scheduled planting day. Well this weekend was scheduled for that and Yesterday we were busy getting prepared doing things like building a new SWC for our tomatoes and filling our daughters flower box with Mel's Mix. We finally made it through the last of our Vermiculite. Now when we have to plant more we will have to buy it in small packages. Last fall when we first discovered Square Foot Gardening We found a vermiculite mine not too far from us in Virginia. We bought a palet load that was over 60 Cu Feet of vermiculite. Well this weekend we finally exhausted our supply of course we did fill over 12 beds for our vegetable garden and our entire flower garden with the stuff so must have filled close to 20 beds or more. Well so after all was done yesterday we called it a day and did not have a chance to plant our seeds that we had to wait until after the LSF. Well the last spring frost for our area was around the 15th. So we were determined to get our seeds and transplants in the ground. So we did not let a little rain stop us from planting our seeds. Well we took shifts and would come in organize what we needed to plant and where then head out and plant them in our garden. Well we got a little soaked but we were able to get everything we wanted to planted. Here is a link to the layout of our garden as well as a look at everything we planted for anyone interested. My Garden Design Well Glad that we had a chance to get everything planted. We got a little wet but it was worth it.

Flowers on squash and cuke seedlings

Good thing that it is nearly time to transfer outside because my squash and cukes that were started indoors have started to flower so should get them outside so that they can thrive. I also transplanted my Giant Pumpkin outside inside it was starting to lose leaves and they were turning yellow so I figured move it out now and if it is too early just start another next week seeded directly outdoors. I certainly learned that do not start squash or pumpkins indoors more than a couple of weeks indoors.

 
 
 

Strawberries and even more strawberries oh my.

Well yesterday our strawberry bare root order finally came in. It seems that we got a double order of all the Strawberries and Asparagus plants that we ordered. So yesterday after work I was already making a trip to Lowe's to pick up fences to surround our future Fruit trees from the deer. But while there found out we not only received our strawberry order but got a double helping. We had already ordered 75 plants figuring I would need lots if I were to have any hopes at getting any before my DD eats them all. Well so now we have 150 plants. We also had to build and fill another 4x4 box to have space to plant them all. Since they were plants if we tried to return them they would have died anyhow. So hopefully at least half the bare root plants will survive so we can get the original number of plants we wanted. If we get more than that I guess will have to make berry jam or something.

Tomato Seedling Progress

Here are some pictures of my tomato seedlings. They seem to be doing well and as the LFD is the 15th we will be acclimating them this week then putting them in the garden probably towards the end of the week. The really large tomato plants are from clippings from last summers plants. I think the longest one is around 2 feet long. So when we put it out we will already have to trellis it.  
 
 
 

Starting a Gardening Blog

This will document my adventures in gardening and show the successes and failures that we encounter as we adventure into the world of Gardening. Here are some of my seedlings. Some of these were started around 29 February 2008.

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