Firstly, Landon continues to prefer, vehemently, to sleep only in the wrap during the day, and snuggled up next to me at night. While I enjoy his cuddles, this does make it quite hard to get anything done during the day, and is also getting quite hot. So there you have it. While I have managed to do some farming during my "baby breaks," I've had very little time left for blogging. Right now, though, Mike is at work trying to get the little guy to sleep in his crib, and so I have both a bit of time, and a need to be distracted!
The garden looks fantastic, despite my neglect. We've been enjoying our own lettuce, arugula, mixed greens, radishes, and herbs for a few weeks. After our recent heat wave of last week, the arugula and greens bolted, but this timing was for the best, as the arugula was sharing space with tomatoes and eggplants who were looking for more room. Tonight we had our first broccoli, which was delicious. Tomorrow night's dinner with be broccoli quiche with our own broccoli and our own eggs, and I'm already looking forward to it.
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| Left side of the garden 7-1-2012 |
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| Right side of the garden 7-1-2012 |
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| First broccoli harvest! 7-1-2012 |
My perennial nemeses, the potato bugs and their disgusting larvae, are back. This year I tried to be more diligent about finding and removing the eggs from the potato plants, and I do think that helped, although I have noticed the larvae over the past two days. My potato plants are tremendously happy, which has made bug picking a bit more difficult as there are so many leaves to check. I hope this means that we get a huge potato harvest, as the potato bug picking portion of the summer always leaves me needing a reminder of why it's still worth it to grow potatoes.
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| Potato plants 7-1-2012 |
We also have our first tomatoes! I was surprised to see them this early - it feels earlier than last year, but I haven't had a chance to check my old posts to confirm this. The snap pea plants are also flowering, and green beans and pole beans are growing well. My uncle david's dakota dessert squash plants have already exceeded last year's growth, and I'm hopeful that this year I'll actually get to taste this squash. My leeks/shallots/scallions seem to have flourished despite the weird worm that was eating them earlier in the season, and you can see that one of my holdover tomato plants is happily growing in the corner of that bed. I've decided to leave my mystery tomato plants alone to see what they do. I have no clue what variety they are, since they are holdovers from last year's grab bag of heirlooms.
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| First tomato! 7-1-2012 |
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| Uncle David's Dakota Dessert Squash 7-1-2012 |
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| Pole beans 7-1-2012 |
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| Snap pea flowers 7-1-2012 |
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| Beets. Well, a couple, anyway. 7-1-2012 |
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| Bush green beans, lettuce and mixed greens 7-1-2012 |
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| Mystery tomato, scallions, leeks and shallots 7-1-2012 |
My lettuce transplant experiment was a total success! The moved plants adjusted well to their new spots in the bed, and I'm quite proud of what I think was an innovative work around to thinning, which is a gardening concept that I have yet to embrace (honestly, out of laziness more than anything else).
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| Happy lettuce 7-1-2012 |
You may have noticed that the weed situation is looking fairly good - this is entirely thanks to our family friend Joe, who spent the better portion of his last visit to our house weeding the garden, and to whom I am eternally grateful. Anne also weeded, and planted chard and green beans to fill in some holes in those beds, and she started the cauliflower seedlings indoors (they look very sad and leggy right now, though, so no pictures).
