Going vertical

My plants are starting to get big enough that they need some support. This picture shows my cucumbers starting to grow up the trellis. I "train" them at the beginning of the season using plant twist ties and then their own vining tendrils take over and they'll end up covering the trellis.

I always struggle to find the best way to stake my tomato plants. I'm never quite satisfied with the methods I've chosen. This year I'm borrowing an idea I got from my friend Vicki at work. I'm using the triangular cages (opened up) like I did with my tomatoes in 2008. But I am combining them with stakes added for support. The cages in 2008 turned out to be too flimsy and fell over under the weight of the tomatoes by August. Then in 2009 and 2010 I used stakes but I didn't like how they don't allow the plant to spread out. Maybe combining the two will be the best of both worlds. So this morning I went out and got my cages and stakes out of the mini barn and set them up with my tomatoes. Here is a picture of my two Cherokee Purple plants with a basil plant in the middle The cage is tied to the stakes and then the tomatoes are tied to the cage.


And just for fun (not vertical) my zucchinis have blossoms! I know they are still a little ways off from producing zucchinis, but they are getting there! I love this time of year!


Today's weather:
High temp: 82 F
Low temp: 67 F
Humid, cloudy, chance of scattered showers

The garden is in!

It is as hot and humid as late July outside! I worked out in the garden for about an hour and a half this morning and I finally had to come in. I can't take the heat! But the good news is all of my plants are in. I still need to plant the bush bean and pole bean seeds and I plan to toss a few pumpkin seeds on the compost pile and see if anything comes up. But the transplants are in. All total I spent exactly $50 on plants this year. I don't remember exactly what I spent on seeds, but I think it was in the neighborhood of $6 or so. I still need to buy supplies to make a cucumber trellis as well as bean and tomato supports, but expenses so far have been relatively low (thankfully!).

In the top picture today you can see how my two broccoli plants have grown since I put them in. Also, the nasturtiums I planted between the broccoli are up and growing. Behind the broccoli are the two cucumber plants I bought this weekend. I went back to the variety I tried two summers ago: Burpless Hybrid. They were long and skinny and the taste was the best I've ever tasted in a cucumber. I think my trellis-building will have to wait until after graduation next weekend. Oh, and also in this picture you can see the snow peas flowering and climbing up their trellis. The chives are still in bloom although I think the flowers are on their way out.


Take a look here at my root crops. The beets are really growing. And the green onions and carrots are starting to make a respectable showing.


Here are my hot peppers tucked in behind the flowering sage. I have planted one banana pepper, one poblano, two jalepeno, and four serrano. Also toward the back is a rosemary plant that I tucked into the only available spare place in the garden.


So here is the garden today. Jeff mowed the lawn this morning so I had him pile the grass clippings in the back. Once they cool off and start decomposing, I'll spread them around my plants (tomatoes first!) as mulch. Other things I've added to the garden today that I haven't mentioned yet are Beauregard sweet potatoes (twice as many as last year), two Italian oregano plants, two curly parsley plants, two butternut squash plants, and four Big Bertha sweet bell pepper plants.

Today's weather:
High temp 86 F
Low temp 65 F
Sunny with 10% humidity (which feel like a lot more than that if you ask me!)

Planting time!

My lone zucchini plant. I didn't grow zucchini last year and missed it so I decided to grow it again this year.

I have had this day designated as my planting day for weeks now so I didn't let a sick kid or the threat of rain deter me. So this morning I left Jeff at home to tend the sick kid and took my 13 year old down to the Bloomington Farmer's Market in search of plants for my garden. I'd made a list based on my garden plan. That place was packed with vendors and shoppers. I ended up spending $17 and I got 4 tomato plants (2 Cherokee Purples, 1 Beefy Boy, and 1 Roma), 4 hot pepper plants (2 Jalepeno, 1 Banana Pepper, and 1 Poblano), 1 zucchini plant, 4 Sweet Genovese Basil plants, and 1 rosemary plant. I was disappointed that I couldn't find any cucumber or butternut squash plants, and the only sweet bell pepper plants I could find were California Wonder and I want Big Bertha. I also didn't buy any oregano or parsley because I was out of cash. So obviously I am not done shopping for plants although I am done for today. I am thinking of making a trip to Cox's Plant Farm near Clayton, Indiana. Next to the farmer's market, it is my favorite place to buy plants.


Above is a photo of one of the tomato plants I bought alongside a basil plant. (Returning readers will remember that I plant basil among my tomatoes to attract parasitic wasps in order to control the disgusting tomato pest, the Tomato Hornworm.) I am a bit torn about the tomato situation. I only bought 4 tomato plants today and interplanted them with basil. I am trying to learn from past mistakes and last year I learned two things about tomatoes. One is that I prefer to let my tomatoes sprawl with minor support instead of staking and pruning. I find I get more tomatoes that way. The other thing I learned is that you can't crowd tomatoes. They need their room, especially if you let them sprawl. So my 4 tomato plants and basil plants take up all the room I have for them in the garden. But 4 tomato plants is not many at all. I want to make salsa and tomato sauce and I just don't think 4 plants will cut it. But I don't know where I could fit any more in. I need to think about that a while.

My garden planting isn't done. Here's what I've planted so far: lots of snow peas (now flowering), butterhead lettuces (almost ready to start harvesting), 4 rows of beets (2 inches tall), two rows of green onions and one row of carrots (all about 1 inch tall), 2 broccoli transplants, nasturtium seeds (two sets of leaves each so far), a row of sunflowers (about 4-5 inches tall), dill seeds (sprouting), kale seeds (sprouting), 4 tomato plants, 4 basil plants, 4 hot pepper plants, 1 rosemary plant, 1 zucchini plant, and yarrow seeds (the last 6 items planted today). I have already got bush bean and pole bean seeds but I'm holding off on planting those because I'm exhausted. Still need to buy 1 oregano plant, 1 parsley plant, 2 cucumber plants, 1 butternut squash plant, 3-4 bell pepper plants, and 1-2 sweet potato plants. My perennial chives, sage, coreopsis, and lavender are coming back again. Here's what my garden looked like today when I finished (just as the rain was starting, by the way.):


Today's weather:
High temp: 68 F
Low temp: 55 F
Showers.

My murderous rampage

I went on a murderous rampage tonight although I fear it may be too late. We decided to pull out the big guns. Now, we've tried to stay organic as much as possible and have had generally good luck. But this squash vine borer thing has gotten out of control. We went to the organic supply store to buy beneficial nematodes to attack the pesky grubs, but we found out that the store didn't have any in stock. They'd have to order it for us. We felt that time was of the essence so we looked for other alternatives. We ended up getting a product called Rotenone. It is an organic pesticide. However, some organic gardeners dispute its use because it is still considered moderately hazardous. It is considered "organic" because it is made from naturally occurring substances.

Compared to "nonorganic" pesticides, it is still less harmful over all and the damage being inflicted in our garden is bad enough that we felt we need to go this route. I waited until this evening after all the bees (i.e. pollinators) had left the garden before I began stalking my prey. I had made up a gallon of solution using 4 tsp. of the rotenone to 1 gallon of water. With spray bottle in one gloved hand and a knife in the other, I headed toward my squash. My second zucchini has been hanging on for dear life for two days now so I doused it good. My spaghetti squash is looking worse and worse every day. It is yellow and wilted and some leaves are starting to turn brown. It may be too late for the zucchini and spaghetti squash, but I'm doing what I can. I also went through the pumpkin patch and sprayed all of the vines that I could. All three plant crops had evidence of the borers (the golden frass at the site of entry). I'll see in the morning if I notice any difference.

In other news, I planted some of my fall crops today. I direct seeded everything in a vacant area of the garden. I re-planted the broccoli and cauliflower (since what I planted two weeks ago never came up). I also planted mustard and collard greens and several spinach plants. I'm going to plant more lettuce too, but I'm holding off on that since the Indiana Extension Service says to wait until August 15 for fall plantings of lettuce.

Today we went to visit the place where we had a plot in a community garden when we were first married. We were walking up and down the aisles between the plots and critiquing what we saw. We were amused at the fact that we both have learned so much since that time we tried to garden years ago. It made me feel better about my own garden. Most of these gardens were not well-tended. They were overgrown, ripe veggies hung on the vine as food for the pests that were moving in, and everything needed to be watered. Despite the problems we've had lately, I think our garden is in pretty good shape and we are doing a lot of things right. This was exactly the pick-me-up I needed today.

End of July Garden Update

So technically I'm a day late, but it is time for the monthly garden review.

First of all, I finally have a new blog header picture! I've been waiting for that particular bunch of cherry tomatoes to ripen for weeks solely for the photo op. I've had them pegged for my blog header for a while and today they were finally picture-worthy in my opinion.

I have to admit, the end of this month finds me in kind of a sad gardening mood. I realize now that the early part of the summer was easy on us. July has been much more difficult. Challenges that passed us by early on have started to hit us hard the last couple of weeks of the month.

Here's a plant-by-plant update:

* July started with bitter lettuces being dug up and added to compost. Their former bed sat empty for most of the month of July. For fall crops, I direct sowed some broccoli and cauliflower in that spot and so far I've only seen one broccoli seedling.
* Carrots are still in the garden and we've harvested a few, but generally I've decided I planted them too close together and didn't thin them out enough. They haven't had adequate room to grow to a useful size.
* The green onions have been slow to grow, but the ones I've pulled up to use in salads have been good. Next year I want to plant a bigger crop of these. We go through green onions faster than what this crop has allowed.
* My two zucchini plants provided us with lots and lots of zucchini. Most of it has been shredded and frozen. A week ago one plant succumbed to the squash vine borer and I fear that today the same thing is happening to the remaining plant. I think zucchini is done for this year.
* My potatoes didn't make it this year. I planted both Red Norland and Irish Cobblers. They started out impressively enough. But I didn't have a lot of soil to mound on them properly. What really did them in, though, is the amount of rain we had this May and June. It rained and rained and rained and area rivers and ponds flooded. Many people lost their homes so I guess I'm lucky that I only lost my potatoes. The tops turned yellow and died off way early and when I dug them up, the potatoes I found were rotten. I'd heard that potatoes were "really easy" to grow, but I don't think I'll try them again next year.
* My sweet potato plant looks healthy as ever. It has been vining out all over the place and will probably take over the area previously occupied by its next door neighbor: the zucchini. Still no idea how it is doing underground, but if the foliage is any clue, it's doing well.
* My yellow onions started to fall over which I took as a sign to harvest. I pulled about every other one up and was really disappointed with how small they were. I expected bigger. Maybe I planted them too closely together. I left the other half of onions in the ground to see if they'll grow anymore and the other ones are drying on my back patio before I store them.
* The bush beans did really well. We had two fairly large harvests and they tasted great. I plan to do pole beans next year. I might plant more bush beans too to provide us a harvest before the pole beans are ready.
* The pumpkins have become a thorn in my side, so to speak. The main reason I'm growing them is because of my husband thinking it would be neat to have our own pumpkin to carve at Halloween. Meanwhile, the pumpkins have provided me more worries than the rest of the garden combined. They are huge and are growing into the neighboring beds. There is no longer a walkway between the pumpkins and the tomatoes and bell peppers. Plus, I am tormented by an infestation of squash bugs and squash vine borers. I have to go out and kill bugs and tear off leaves with eggs every day. And now my pumpkins are covered with a nasty case of powdery mildew.The good news is that I seem to have several pumpkins set (3 different kinds) and if the plants hold out, we should have a decent harvest.
* We have three watermelons growing on the vine and the first one looks almost ready.
* We have had 8 muskmelons growing on the vines and so far I have picked two. The first one turned out to be not quite ripe yet. The second one, however, is delicious and juicy.
* I have been overwhelmed by the cucumbers my two little plants have produced so far. I have put up 10 pints of dill pickles and 8 pints of bread and butter pickles and I have a big collection of cucumbers in my fridge that I think I'm going to do as dill spears sometime this weekend. Not only are they plentiful, but they taste really good too. My mom says she's never tasted a better cucumber. At the nursery they were just labeled as "burpless cucumbers".
* We have been harvesting green bell peppers once every couple of days for use in salads or as a seasoning. I have ten bell pepper plants and one has already produced all of its peppers and I pulled it for the compost bin. The other plants are still full of small but growing peppers.
* My spaghetti squash plants have been making me proud. I have 9 spaghetti squash in various stages of development. I think the first one is about done.However, my leaves are turning yellow and the plants don't look good. I don't know if the problem is squash vine borer, powdery mildew, or just lack of a good watering, but I worry that the plants won't last long enough for the squash to ripen.
* The tomatoes are doing well (knock on wood). I have been bringing in a bowl of ripe tomatoes every morning. Most of them are cherry tomatoes, but some of the bigger ones have started turning. Last night we sliced and ate our first Cherokee Purple with dinner and it was delicious!

I suppose I should consider myself lucky and remember all the positive things that have come out of the garden so far. It has been a pretty good garden, especially when you consider this is my first real garden. And nothing is perfect. There will always be problems. I guess the trick is to stay one step ahead of the bad guys and never let them get the upper hand.

Today's local weather:
High temp: 90 F
Low temp: 66 F
Partly cloudy with thunderstorms this evening.

Squash Vine Borer

As a follow up to yesterday's post about the dying zucchini, it seems I have a case of Squash Vine Borers. I pulled up the dead plant last night and the main stem broke off in my hand just an inch or two above ground level. What I found looked much like the two pictures at the bottom of the page I've linked to. Big white juicy grubs, three of them, squirming around in a rotted stem. I've put them in a trash bag and tied it off. Now I'm on the lookout for frass (a golden cornmeal-like substance that appears around the holes once the little grubs burrow into the stems). I haven't seen any more yet, but I'm paranoid.

The really annoying thing is I saw a pretty looking new insect in the garden yesterday and spent over an hour searching on the internet trying to figure out what it was. I never found a satisfactory match. Then this morning, my husband found a photo of the adult moth form of the squash vine borer. I'm 100% positive that's what I saw yesterday. If only I'd known! I should have killed it then and there...UGH!

Today's local weather:
High temp: 83 F
Low temp: 65 F
Sunny and clear

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

We made a discovery this morning when Jeff was watering the garden. Having the water raining down onto the plants made the squash bugs come out. He stood there watering while I was on the watch for the bugs. Whenever I'd see one, I'd squash it (pun intended). I must have killed at least 5 or 6 just this morning. We've killed 2-3 a day for the past several days. I've also made at least two trips a day out to check the leaves of the pumpkins, spaghetti squash, and zucchini. I've torn off several corners of leaves with clusters of squash bug eggs on them. I drown them in the bucket of water with dish soap. I'm doing my best to keep those critters from gaining control in my garden.

Death of a Zucchini

As you can see, it looks like one of my two zucchini plants has about bit the dust (the one on the left). I noticed that it hadn't really been sending out blossoms the last couple of days and was a little wilty looking this morning. Jeff watered the garden and we hoped it might perk up. If anything it has gotten much worse. I'm not sure what the culprit is, but you can see the other plant (on the right) looks fine. In fact, it has about 3 new zucchini on it. I suppose I should pull up the dying plant so whatever is wrong with it doesn't affect the healthy plant.

It has served us well...

Big Salad

This is what I harvested from my garden last night:

* 4 large grape tomatoes
* 8 cherry tomatoes
* 6 long cucumbers
* 2 large zucchini
* 1 green bell pepper
* 3 green onions
* 2 carrots (my first two this year!)

I had to buy the lettuce and spinach at the store, but I combined them with the tomatoes, half a cucumber, the bell pepper, the green onions, and the carrots to make a big salad to go with dinner. This is exactly what I had in mind when I planted all these salad veggies! It's too bad I couldn't provide the lettuce and spinach too. But timing is everything in gardening.

The carrots were a risk. I'd checked on the carrots before and they were no bigger than toothpicks. But I'd been purposely avoiding them hoping they were growing. I decided to try again yesterday and I got two plump carrots that were about 4" each. The variety is St. Valery (heirloom) which I got from Seeds of Change. According to the seed packet and the website, these should be at least 8" long, but I attribute their length to my soil. I imagine it is pretty dense down deep and I didn't have the equipment necessary to dig deep enough. But I'm not complaining. 4" carrots are fine with me. A bigger carrot problem, in my opinion, is I had trouble thinning them and I worry that some of the remaining carrots are so close together that they won't grow very much as a result. I've thinned a couple of times, but it is hard to reach in there. Part of the problem is that the carrots are on the interior of their bed and are a little harder for me to comfortably reach. More lessons for next year.

So I now have 11 cucumbers in my fridge. I also have 9 zucchini. I've decided that today I'm going to shred the zucchini and freeze it for future zucchini breads.

Today's local weather:
High temp: 79 F
Low temp: 59 F
Sunny and clear

Looking ahead to fall

These are the dog days of summer where daytime highs are in the upper 80's to lower 90's. My garden has become a jungle and every day offers something to harvest. But I am beginning to think about transitioning to fall.

Yesterday I picked the second and final batch of beans from my Blue Lake bush beans. I was surprised that the second batch was almost as big as the first was a week ago. I simmered them on the stove for a couple of hours and we had them with dinner last night. They were delicious, but I really wished I'd gone the pole bean route because two batches of green beans just aren't enough for me or for the family. But, the bush beans are spent for the season, so when I harvested the beans, I pulled the plants up and put them in the compost bin. This clears an area for some fall plantings that I plan to make around August 1.The space along the left (just next to the onions) is where the beans had been. Across the path from them is the area where my lettuce was earlier in the summer. I've already planted broccoli and cauliflower seeds in the former lettuce bed. They haven't germinated yet but it has only just been 7 days. Any day now...

Here's something that has me excited: my spaghetti squash. I have 8 spaghetti squash set so far. I love them and can't wait to begin harvesting them. The rest of my family isn't so fond of them. I'll have a lot to eat myself one of these days. Of course, I haven't figured out how or where I'm going to store them. I really wish I had a root cellar. This picture is a closeup (complete with morning rain still on) of the largest of my 8 spaghetti squash:

Finally, it is only Tuesday and I'm already thinking this coming Friday will be Pickle Day part 2. In the time since Saturday I have accumulated 5 huge cucumbers in my fridge and there are at least 3-4 more out there today. By Friday I will have enough for more pickles. I love looking at my two plants that have vined all over the garden fence and take up probably 15 feet of its length. Isn't it pretty?

Today's local weather:
High temp: 84 F
Low temp: 62 F
Partly cloudy, chance of showers this afternoon

I love my garden

I've been playing on the computer this morning. I figured out how to superimpose labels on the photo I took this morning of my garden. I know that I've been posting a lot of pictures, many of them perhaps redundant. I figure this January when temps are hovering around zero and everything is covered with white, I'll sit and browse through all these pictures and remind myself of the garden in full swing.

A few days ago, Martha left a comment on one of my posts asking how big the garden is and what I plan to do with the leftovers. The vegetable garden is 20' X 24'. As big as it is, lately I've been feeling like it isn't big enough. Of course, I live in surburbia so I am lucky to have what I have. I'm not complaining. I find myself already thinking about how I can manage the space better next year. As for leftovers, I'm not sure. I will can and freeze what I can, and I have family nearby. My father used to garden when I was a kid so my parents love homegrown veggies. But they don't garden anymore. Dad has already asked me to give them any extra zucchini when they start getting backed up.

In another comment Molly Day asked about hand pollinating. I first read an article about it in my paper copy of Mother Earth News (sorry, I can't remember which issue, but it was from earlier in 2008). Then I've been reading the gardening forums at gardenweb.com. They have a forum devoted solely to Pumpkins, Squash, and Gourds. Recently there has been a discussion about hand pollinating and there have been several helpful pictures posted. Basically, a male blossom has a single stamen inside. It looks like the tip of an orange Q-tip and it is covered with a yellowish dust (pollen). Here's a picture I just ran out and took:
A female blossom looks very different inside. It has several whorled tube-like structures called the pistol. Here's a picture (although I apologize that it isn't clearer):
Another way to identify a female blossom is that it always has immature fruit behind it. So the female zucchini has a small zucchini fruit behind it, the pumpkin has a small round yellow ball behind it, the melons have a small green round ball behind it. Here's that same female zucchini blossom with a small unfertilized zucchini behind it:

Today's local weather:
High temp: 85 F
Low temp: 70 F
Humid with chance of thunderstorms this afternoon

Lots of rain makes the garden grow

This has got to be a freakish year as far as precipitation goes and I will not expect future years to be so wet. We have gotten so much rain since the end of May. I think I have watered my garden once maybe twice in all that time. Every couple of days it rains...a lot...and fills up my rain gauge!

My first muskmelon today:


Meanwhile, my garden is growing out of control. This is a good thing overall. My zucchini plants are producing a zucchini a day. (And those zucchini are huge now that I have started hand-pollinating them.) My muskmelon and watermelon plants have vined out and taken over their entire bed. My pumpkins have vined and filled their beds. My spaghetti squash is stretching out, filling about 1/3 of their beds so far and this morning had blossoms for the first time. And my tomato plants are becoming too big and heavy for my trellis to support them.

Just one branch of a cherry tomato plant today:


Between the non-stop rain and the holiday, I haven't had much time to work in the garden for a few days. I need to see what can be done to support the tomato plants and I need to get some weeding done. The vining plants that I mentioned early are starting to reach out into the walkways and I'm afraid it won't be long before they swallow up the entire path way around the bed. Eek!

My muskmelon (far left) and baby watermelon (near right) bed today:


The exciting news is that now that the pumpkin vines have grown long enough, there is finally a female blossom opened this morning. I was so excited to finally see it! I used one of the many male blossoms to pollinate it. I hope it is the first of many. With all of these vines taking over my garden, I'd at least like something to show for it!

My pumpkin patch today:

End of June Garden Update

I was surfing around through some garden blogs and it occurred to me that I should post an overall garden update what with it being the last day in June and all. I don't have my camera right now so pictures will have to wait, but here's the lowdown on my edible backyard:

Veggie garden:
* lettuce has turned bitter and tonight I will dig them up for the compost pile
* carrots are getting bigger but still not big enough to eat
* green onions, like carrots, not big enough to eat but they're getting there
* zucchini plants (2) each plant grows 3-4 zucchini at a time; they have been staying small and then turning yellow and deflating so just yesterday morning I started hand pollinating them
* Red Norland and Irish Cobbler potatoes don't look so good; growth seems stunted and plants are turning yellow; don't know if it is time to harvest
* sweet potato plant has leaves that look healthy and are spreading; don't know what is going on underground since I didn't know to separate the slips when I planted
* yellow onions are tall, robust, and starting to flower
* bush beans look healthy, lots of flowers, and I noticed the first tiny bean today
* pumpkins have prominent male blooms every morning and lots of vines with immature blooms just waiting to open (I'm hoping they're female blooms)
* baby watermelon vines are spreading out every day with lots of pale yellow flowers and several pea-sized fruits
* muskmelon vines are spreading out like the watermelon with slightly darker yellow flowers and today my son found our first fruit - it's the size of a large kiwi!
* cucumber plants (2) are spreading out and growing up the side of my fence with lots of flowers and tiny baby cucumberlets; today I saw two different large cucumbers in the later stages of ripening
* bell pepper plants (10) have lots of tiny buds and most plants have one ripening pepper
* spaghetti squash plants (4) are vining out and are smaller than the other squashes since I planted them later from seed, but they are making good progress
* tomatoes are out of control due to fertilizer; plants are more like bushes and every single plant has a least a few green tomatoes on them; I am starting to worry about what to do with all the cherry and grape tomatoes once they ripen because there are LOTS; also lots of romas (I think I'll be canning this year)

Berry garden:
* strawberries continue to ripen berries on a regular basis although they wouldn't win a marathon
* blueberries are taking forever to ripen but finally a few ripen each day
* blackberries just started turning and we haven't been able to pick any yet
* raspberries are ripening one or two handfuls of berries per day; I pick them and freeze them until I get enough to do something with them

Today's local weather:
High temp: 75 F
Low temp: 55 F
Sunny and breezy

Thinning pumpkins and buying annuals

I'm still sad about the demise of my lettuces, but I decided I have to move on. As you can see, my pumpkin bed was starting to get out of control and it is still only June! So yesterday, I did what I had been putting off doing. I thinned the pumpkins. When I planted the plants, I realized there were too many in too close quarters, but I wasn't sure how they would do and I planted extra in case. I figured I'd pull out the extras if they ever got too crowded. Yesterday was that day.

I took out half of the plants and they are still stretching to the limits of their space, but maybe they aren't so cramped now. Of course, with all of those plants out of the garden, my compost bin is filling up. And I have decided to start hand pollinating my squashes using the instructions from the people on the Vegetable Gardening forum at gardenweb.com. I was getting 3-4 zucchini at a time per each plant but they never got more than 3 inches long and then started deflating and turning yellow. I think poor pollination was the problem. I'll see if my hand pollination changes things at all.

I also finally went shopping yesterday for some annuals to put in containers on my back patio. That was the area that I've most neglected this year. This is the time of year when we start spending a lot of time, especially evenings, on the back patio and I wanted to spruce it up. Here's what I bought:

* Butter Daisy (Melampodium paludosum)
* Dahlietta Series Dahlia (Dahlia hybrida Dahlietta Series)
* Blue Salvia (Salvia farinacea)
* Periwinkle (Vinca) (Catharanthus roseus)
* Asparagus Fern (Asparagus densifloras "Sprengerii")
* Petunia (pink)
* Zinnia (Zinnia elegans) (gold)
* Serena Angelonia (Angelonia angustifolia "Serena Series")
* Dichondra
* Wave Series Petunia (lavender)
* Spike Dracaena (Dracaena indivisa)

I planted them in containers placed around the corners of my patio. Once I'm sure they've adjusted to their new homes and are thriving, I'll take some pictures to share with you.

Today's local weather:
High temp: 74 F
Low temp: 58 F
Isolated thunderstorms afternoon and evening

Growing season

I took this photo of my vegetable garden this morning at 9:15. I can't believe how much my garden changes in one week's time. The regular sun and warm temps combined with all the rain we got a few weeks ago are working to make everything grow by leaps and bounds. I've taken to drinking my morning coffee on my back patio so I can enjoy the garden and watch the birds who've made my backyard their home. Our backyard has a totally different feel this year and it is so much more welcoming and alive.

My lettuces are plentiful and I'm to the point now where I worry that we won't be able to eat it all before it bolts. I'm going to my UU Christian Circle meeting this afternoon and I'm planning to take them a big salad made from my lettuces. I can't wait for my tomatoes to turn red, but that's still a ways off. It's frustrating because I see my tomato plants filling up with green tomatoes, but they aren't red yet. Here's a close-up shot of one of my grape tomato plants.
However, I do have a cucumber ready to pick and add to my salad.
I also have a zucchini that's ready to pick. I'll have to find some way to use it in tonight's dinner.
You might notice in some of the pictures that I've added grass clippings to mulch some of the plants. I know that organic gardeners recommend mulching plants as a way to regulate soil temperature and prevent weeds, but I had trouble finding something to mulch my plants with that is available this time of year and that won't stunt their growth. The folks on the organic gardening forum at gardenweb.com suggested I use grass clippings. So I told Jeff to hook up the bag that came with the mower and collect them for me when he mowed the lawn. One mowing provided enough mulch for just under half of the garden. Next time he mows I'll mulch the rest of the garden. I hope it works. If nothing else, it looks nicer.

Today's local weather:
High temp: 80 F
Low temp: 58 F
Partly cloudy with afternoon/evening thunderstorms

Signs of life

I just took this picture about 15 minutes ago. It is one of two zucchini plants that are getting huge. They each are 2-3 feet in diameter and now this morning this one has a huge flower. Yesterday I also saw these signs of life:
Two weeks ago I thought this cucumber plant was a goner. The base of its stem had gotten white and brittle. I posted a picture of it at its worst at the top of my May 31, 2008 post. However, I noticed that the leafy growth on top was still green and growing so I left it alone. Yesterday I noticed two healthy-looking yellow flowers on it. The other plant has flowers too. Talk about Phoenix rising from the ashes!

This muskmelon plant also has several flowers.


One of my garden tasks yesterday was to tie the tomato plants to the trellis. They are getting big and bushy (thanks to the fertilizer I added a couple of weeks ago) and will topple over soon without support. Anyway, while twining I found this - my first green roma tomato. See it there in the middle just below the horizontal trellis bar? All of my plants have blooms on them and one of the grape tomato plants has three little tomatoes. I'm expecting more every day.

I'm so overjoyed because I've tried gardening in the past, but I just wasn't doing it right. My plants, if they lived at all, were spindly, unhealthy, and bore little fruit. This year the plants are doing what they're supposed to! Everything is getting bigger and bigger each day. The things that I think have made the biggest difference are 1) the fence has kept rabbits out of the garden, 2) the organic fertilizer has really fed all the plants, and the neem oil soap has kept the little bugs off of the plants.

We have recently been deluged with rain. In fact, south of us towns were underwater. We lucked out and only got drenched and then the water ran off. It has been raining a lot more than usual for several weeks now. While this has had horrible consequences for many homeowners in my area, my garden has benefited. I haven't had to water my garden for a couple of weeks now. Mother Nature is taking care of it for me. And those steady, deep rains are far better than anything I can do with my hose.

Today's local weather:
High temp: 90 F
Low temp: 72 F
Partly cloudy, hot and humid.