The Garden Chronicles - Week 4
It was cloudy the first half of the week. It even rained another inch on Tuesday, but the sun was shining on both Thursday and Friday, and things have mostly dried out.
*****
Muck no more.
I was able to bring the soil back to good condition today.
Peas and cucumber.
I don't know if this little guy's gonna make it. All the rain last week might have nearly drowned him, so soon after being transplanted. Then again, there wasn't much sun this week. Maybe he'll start taking off soon.
The peas are looking good, though. Almost ready to start climbing.
Stakes for 6 future tomatoes.
Not much growth for the first 2 lettuces. At least they're perky and not wilting.
This one is apparently going to be a surprise. It's supposed to be a regular green iceberg, just like the other one, but it's red. The seed packet must have another variety mixed in. Maybe it'll be a red iceberg, maybe it'll just be some kind of red leaf lettuce. We'll have to wait and see.
Kohlrabi coming up.
Turnips and beets.
Turnips.
Beets.
Onions.
Potatoes.
Zucchini in the side plot.
Seed pots in the planter. A little bigger than last week.
The bigger redbud is done for the year.
This one will probably be done by next week.
The western sky (behind me) was a little cloudy earlier, and everything was shady, but sometimes the setting sun gets under the clouds and lights up the front treeline. If it had just rained, there would be a huge rainbow as well. That happens pretty often in the summer, after evening rains. Maybe I'll get lucky and catch one of them in the future.
Evening shade.
Snowball bush starting to bloom.
Blossoms.
See you next week.
I don't recall ever seeing a zucchini here - makes a very tasty bread.
There's no zucchini in China? Are there any summer squashes at all?
I never looked for them specifically, but next time I'm in the supermarket I will. There are all kinds of squashes - a couple are my wife's favourites and we eat squash very often. She really knows her veggies and how to cook them - she grew up on a farm.
I'll try to watch what my wife does when she cooks them and then report back t you. I LOVE eggplant, especially roasted.
You guys have just inspired me to switch out a couple of my planned pepper plants for a couple of eggplants.
I haven't grown it in years. Should be fun.
My viburnum (closely related to a snowball bush, the the blossoms are a "snowflake" arrangement, instead) is just starting to bloom.
I thought they looked like hydrangea, but it's way too early for them.
I don't know how you keep it so clean looking and weed free.
We actually get wild onions that grow around here.
I was thinking the same thing. I'd have to basically spend ALL of my non-working time weeding to keep mine that neat, and my garden is a fraction of the size.
Secret weapon... a Hula Hoe.
Not just any old stirrup hoe, but a Hula Hoe Pro. There's just something about the blade. I've tried other brands that didn't work nearly as well. Pulling it through compliant soil is like running a vegetable peeler down the side of a cucumber. Swoosh. You can tear through a lot of ground pretty quickly, as long as it isn't too compacted. I'll sometimes use the gas tiller on a shallow setting for the really hard stuff, mostly in the aisles.
It'll be harder to keep it as weed free later on. There'll be some weeds in the corn that I won't bother with, once it gets too tall to move through easily. There'll also be some in the Asparagus, after it bushes out for the summer.
Everything looks pretty happy. Love the Snowball tree.
Right now my garden is a muddy swamp and now we are having a thunderstorm tonight. 12 tomato plants in the ground under the hoop house is all I have got done.
It rained here today as well, and there's supposed to be some nasty storms moving through on Tuesday. A possibility of torrential downpours and silver-dollar-sized hail, or so the weather guy says.
I was going to plant some more tomorrow, but I think I'll wait until after the Tuesday storms. Don't want any new seed to get washed out.
Jeez, stay safe.
I'm hoping the forecast changes. It's still a couple of days out, so it might. Even if it doesn't change, there's still a chance that the worst of it will miss me. Maybe I'll get lucky.
So much for that. I guess I had the wrong day. I just watched tonight's news on the DVR and the alert day is tomorrow, not Tuesday. All they said in this broadcast was a chance for strong storms and 'large' hail.
It might not be so bad.
Yep, just got the depressing forecast of overnight FROST this week. Now I have to get my crop cover out and screw around with that. Still have all the peppers and tomatoes in the leanto GH so no worries there.
It rained for two days straight here but I didn't get my rain catchment set up in time to take advantage of it. Still tweaking the passive gravity feed irrigation system but I'm determined to keep the garden off grid as much as possible, even if it means schlepping water.
Good luck with your frost. It looks like I'm going to have a night in the upper 30s this week, but I doubt it will frost. Still sucks, though. I have things outside and in the ground right now that need overnight temps to be at least in the upper 40s, preferably the 50s.
I got lucky with the weather today. There's reports of damage all around the area, but the wind wasn't so bad here, and the hail was only about the size of grapes. I did get another 2 inches of rain in about an hour, though, so the garden is a mud pie again. I only noticed a little bit of damage from the hail. Broken onion shoots, mostly. I couldn't really make out any of the smaller seedlings from outside the fence, but I hope they're okay.
A passive irrigation system sounds handy to me sometimes, especially in the middle of summer. Sometimes I really wish I had a tank up there that I could just fill up every other day or so and then forget about. Lots of tubing and drip lines to manage, though, right? Still, it's probably worth it.
I had a lot of soaker hose from all of the gardens I have started for clients. Soaker hoses don't work without pressure so all I did was sit in the GH, listen to a ball game [those were the days] and punch holes every 6" in 400'. So with my new configuration I just laid them out hole side down and will be mulching them in once most of the planting is done. Got a 275 gal ICB tank for $50 two years ago, set it on cinder blocks. All plumbed up and tested out well today.
Now all I need is rain!
Yup. I had some herbs in containers on the deck, but they've drowned, I'm afraid.
My first strawberries are on the vine. I hope the rain lets up so they don't rot before they ripen.
Always make sure that outside containers have good drainage and do NOT use saucers under them.