We've had a ton of rain over the past week, which has been fantastic for my seedlings and even better for my weeds, so today when Landon was ready to be handed off to his dad, I headed out to the garden. My first task was hilling the potatoes, which have gotten huge over the past week. Mike picked up two yards of compost this morning to use for hilling (and for other things, as that is clearly an excessive amount of compost to hill two beds of potatoes), so I started by shoveling the compost out of the truck into the garden, then into the beds. I'm going to be one sore mama tomorrow. I surveyed the plants for potato bugs and eggs before I started, and found about 10 potato bugs, although I couldn't find any eggs. I'd really like to catch the eggs so that I don't have to deal with the larvae, so I'm going to try to get out to keep checking over the next couple of weeks.
The seeds that I planted two weeks ago are all coming up nicely, and earlier this week I put in my second planting of bush green beans. I'm planting three sets 10 days apart, in hopes that they'll be ready for harvest at a staggered interval this year.
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| Pole beans 6-10 |
The beets continue to do nothing. Strawberries are coming in, and I hope that this year we'll be able to snag a few before the birds eat them all!
In the lettuce bed, I've tried to replant some of the lettuces, rather than thinning them, as my seeds came up in clumps (I'm sure this had nothing to do with how they were sown...). Today they transplanted lettuces are looking a little limp, but I'm hoping this will work.
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| Lettuce 6-10 |
The carrots and radishes look fantastic. We harvested our first radish for salad on Saturday night, and it was delicious.
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| Carrots and radishes 6-10 |
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| Chard 6-10 |
I think cutworms got to one of my eggplant seedlings and one of my pepper seedlings, so we hit the farmer's market again to buy replacements. The other seedlings in those beds are fine, so I hope these were isolated incidents.
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| Eggplant and tomatoes 6-10 |
I have at least three tomato seedlings that have come up from last year's crop, including the one below (with one of last year's onions), one in the scallion/leek/shallot bed, and one nestled in with the cabbage. I haven't pulled any of them yet, as I'm still admiring the fact that they took the initiative to grow.
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| Rogue tomato and onion from last year's garden 6-10 |
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| Snap peas |
Lily has spent the past week trying to eat the bulbs that my mother planted, so Mike installed a pretty fence around the perennial garden out front to keep the dogs out. It looks lovely (he also mulched), but has been completely ineffective as far as the dogs go, and I've caught them both in there several times. Apparently the new mulch is delicious (says Lily). She can't understand why she's also banned from the vegetable garden...
