Garden Work

The peas were finally kaput and the garlic was ready to be harvested so both were pulled this week.  I actually should have pulled them both last week but life got in the way.  In their place I extended the tunnel and planted more kale.  I am going to try blanching and freezing a bunch for Andy's smoothies year round.  On the other side I planted some more summer squash and cucumber seeds since neither are quite as prolific right now as I would like.

Garden Work

A good amount of work has been going on in the garden.  Tomato cages, stakes and soaker hoses have been put in.  I am working on supports for the cucumbers.

Mulch Day

Our weekends have been flying by.  Between catching up on chores and other obligations we just never seem to have enough time for the projects we want to tackle.  So I took a personal day on Tuesday and roped my Dad into coming down to visit me to help out with mulch day.  

We spent longer than I thought we would.  But that's because we removed some plants, planted a few new ones and the big project was changing the size of some of the mulch beds and cleaning up the edging lines.  Thankfully I had help and was able to accomplish all of it in a day!

I am always sore the day after but I always love the way fresh mulch brightens up the yard!

This bed used to end at the edge of the rock but we deepened it by a good 6 inches to give the bushes more room to grow out and to make it easier to mow around.  There was also a Golden Mop Cypress that I replaced with a Peach Flambe Coral Bells.  The Mop was too large for the spot and needed constant pruning so it would not block the hydrangea.  I like the Coral Bell much better, it provides nice color, stays low and once it grows in a bit will fill the space nicely.

 We pulled another Golden Mop Cypress out on this side and replaced it with the same type of Coral Bells.

 All of these beds were widened and evened up.

 I made room for a miniature rose plant that we were given this spring when Andy's Grandma passed.

And of course the veggie garden got a thin layer just to freshen everything up.

Garden Progress

Life has been busy.  I have made time for gardening in between responsibilities but there has not been time for blogging.  A lot has happened since the last post and here is a quick recap.

 The final beds in the garden were amended after I cleared all the weeds out.

 A second succession of peas were planted.  Swiss chard, parsnips, cosmos, zinnias, dill and cilantro seed were all planted.  I'm a little late on some of these things but better late than never.

 An unimpressive 4 of 16 asparagus plants came up.  They are about the height of a pencil but incredibly skinnier.  It's about time I realize I do not have a good site for asparagus.  I will try them again when we eventually move.

 It's been fun watching volunteer seedlings pop up from plants that went to seed last year, like this little dill.

This is why I need to get an indoor light system going.  My windowsill is bulging with seedlings started inside and they are growing leggy from trying to reach towards the sky.  Most of these are in the process of being hardened off outside right now.  The seedlings consist of basil, Fantasia and Music Box sunflowers, dianthus, and snapdragons.

This past weekend a bunch of work was done and I will post about it soon.  We also have a big week ahead.  I plan on changing some plants in our landscaping, mulching, finishing plantings for the summer garden and our new bees are coming.  We ordered Carniolan bees from California this year instead of the Italian bees from Georgia we have gotten the past two years.

Frustration

Remember these cleared out and clean garden beds I spent last Sunday working on?

3 days later I came home to this:

The pictures are blurry but you get the idea that the beds are disheveled and torn apart.  That's thanks to our neighbor's lawn service.  Remember last year when they blew all of our neighbor's leaves into our yard?  Andy had politely talked to them about the problem and we thought it would no longer be an issue.  We were mistaken.

This year they blew leaves all over our yard, into my garden beds and blew the straw all over the place.  Needless to say I was extremely frustrated.  They didn't attempt to clean the leaves out and left the garden as is, they didn't even try to recover the beds with the straw.  Luckily they were still at my neighbor's when I got home and I said something to them.  They tried to act like they didn't know they did it but promised to come clean it up the next day.

Well they didn't show up, so Andy called and they finally came Friday.  When I went out on Saturday to check out their work I realized they cleaned up the leaves but at least a quarter or more of the straw was gone and they tromped all through the beds.  We don't walk through the beds, the point of raised beds is to NOT walk through them for loose soil.  It was obvious they has walked over the beds and compacted the soil.  I was so mad I could have cried, actually I did.

I ended up having to rake back all the straw, take a garden fork to loosen the soil, rake and even out the soil, and recover with straw.  I had to dig up all the garlic I planted and replant it.  I spent an hour and a half fixing their mess.

Preparing for Winter

This past weekend I finally had some free time when the weather was cooperating so I started to clean out the garden and get it ready for winter.

This was the bean, asparagus and random tomato bed with the failed lettuce bed in back before cleaning.

This was after dead plants had been removed, weeds pulled and asparagus cut back.  I topped the asparagus with a nice thick layer of straw and the rest of the bed with a thin layer to help ensure that I don't lose soil this winter to displacement from rain, snow and ice.  The back bed was covered with a layer of leaves from the tree above it.

This is the tomato, eggplant potato bed before being cleaned out.

This is the bed afterward.  The garlic was planted in this bed after it was cleared and so it has a thick layer of straw like the asparagus while the rest has just a thin layer.  As you can tell with the end of daylight savings, and it getting dark much sooner, I was pushing it to get the job done before dark.

A Closer Look

The aerials give a good overview of the whole garden but from the window upstairs everything looks so much smaller than it does in person.  So here is a view around the garden (in the same order) but at ground level.

 Parsnips, snapdragons, kale, cabbages, cosmos and zinnias for cutting.

 Eggplant and potatoes are on the farthest left then followed by all the tomatoes.  The borage is on the edges of the bed and is much later than last year.

 An extra tomato that I had to plant that seems to be done growing.  I knew it was determinate but I thought it would get 5-6 feet tall not 1-2 feet tall.  Green and purple bush beans and then the replanted asparagus.

 My lettuces that refuse to grow no matter how much I water them, give them shade or the proper soil they just won't cooperate.

 The beehive with volunteer morning glories.

 In the front are onions that refuse to bulb and leeks that I have decided to let them do their own thing instead of blanching with more soil.  Behind are the summer squashes that seem to be recovering from SVB after spraying with neem oil but the zucchini to the right don't look as good.

 In the front are my herbs: oregano, chives, thyme and sage.  To the left in the open spot where the garlic was I have seeded more cilantro and dill.  I have been reseeding them all over the place but in the heat and drought they have not been growing.  I hope to get some soon since the cucumbers are coming!  Behind them are cucumbers that are really beginning to produce and KY Wonder pole beans that have vigorous vines but no beans.

In the front dill (that is drying out for seed), rosemary and basil round out my herbs followed by swiss chard.  Behind the chard were peas but now I am growing some new squash plants from seed since the others looked like they were going to fall to SVB.

Around The House

From the pictures I post it looks like our garden might be in our front yard, and I often get comments on it.  However our garden is in our backyard.  In the pictures you are seeing our neighbor's front yard.  We live on a corner so our backyard juts up to our back neighbor's front yard.  Are you now confused?  I took pictures around the house starting in the front to hopefully clear up some of the confusion.

Front of the house.

Going around to the side.

Side of the house.

Heading towards the back of the house.

The back end of our house and property.  The raised beds are to the left of the driveway, the beehive is straight ahead, and the in-ground garden is along the privacy fence all the way up to the house.

If you continue on down the street you can see how our garden is next to the back neighbor's front yard.  In the pictures you are seeing the front yards of the houses on this side street.

Hot!

With all this heat we are having (highs in the 90s with a heat index over 100) it is imperative to be watering the garden.  I got the soaker hoses in earlier this week and have started watering the garden since its been over a week since we have had rain.  Once the plants are established I prefer watering this way so that I can get a good deep soaking and only have to water once a week maybe twice if necessary.

Garden Progress

Things seem to be coming along with all the newly planted seeds and summer crops.

The kale has come up.

The zinnias and cosmos are chugging along.

The potatoes have been hilled up.

The provider beans came in with spotty germination.

The KY Wonder pole beans are doing really well.

All of the summer squash, zucchini and cucumbers have come up.  Soon I will need to thin down the hills to just one seedling.

April Successes and Failures

It's the last day of April and its time to show off this month's fantastic failures and successes.

FAILURES:

All of my chitted spinach germinated and then promptly died.  It seems that lettuce is not in my future this Spring.  None of my potatoes have germinated and I figure at this point none of them will.

Most of my radishes and carrotts were not successful.  Some of the radishes grew on the left, everything on the right died.  I have no clue what was wrong with one half of my bed.  I also never got around to another sowing so it looks like I will eat a total of 5 radishes this year.

The lettuces are still tiny.  They were planted on March 17th and in 44 days they have done practically nothing.  Again I have no clue what the issue is. 

This is my bed of Swiss chard.  As you can tell only three of the plants have germinated and continued to grow in the back, I need to reseed the bed to get some more going.

SUCCESSES:

 Despite the blurry picture all of my herbs and garlic are doing really well.

The peas are also sailing along.