Yep, I am doing another garden. This one started a few weeks ago.
And green beans and Peppers
So it has come to pass, that I would inherently do yet another garden. Previous attempts have not done all that great. I think it's because it's located next to my garage, and therefor all the rain water that hits the garage, hits the garden, and also I was following some ill-informed advice of somebody that has no clue how things grow around here. So how am I going to fix that? I really don't know. I have a virtual swamp to deal with.
First I think I'll deal with drainage. I have to drain at least some of the water off. And that is what I did. Well, me and my teenager daughter, I mean I am lazy, and she usually did something wrong so I get free labor all the time... but mostly I'm just lazy. I mixed two bags of sand I had just laying around, and made two rows, or more like I dug a shallow trench down the middle.
I also plan to dig a little trench but still keep the grass, sort of like the seines between houses around here. Still, there is much work to do...
Well, I think I'm going to wrap up the garden until winter comes and we can plant some cool weather crops. I'm really let down by the whole garden thing, I mean, I might have got $5 worth of cucumbers, $5 worth of peppers, and maybe $10 worth of tomatoes out of it. I was really hoping for something a little more but the insects and rain (a whole lot of rain) were all I got this year. It is a good thing we don't actually depend on this farm for food. I think I'll look into either varieties of veggies that like my swampy soil, or figure out a way to drain it off. I may keep it up for a few weeks more, as there are some tomatoes and peppers left, but by in large, the 2009 summer crop (the lazy man version) is done.
Also there was a screw up on movies so there will not be a film this week, but I will make up for it... or not. :o)
I feel like the garden is waning, without really producing much. Things are still going along, but I can't help but think there is something wrong. What I have harvested tastes great, but really, I don't know if I got $20 worth of veggies out of it...
Boy oh boy, has it rained here the past couple of days. It seems like a couple of inches each day, and that (I think) causes its own problems with anything that grows. Nothing is dead yet, but there is a kind of creeping death, starting at the base of the plant. It turns leaves yellow then brown. And to top it off something is eating my crops too. I put out some Sevin dust, but it probably got washed away by the rain. Anyway, despite all the rain, things still look good. I picked some peppers and a cucumber. More to come... we hope.
So the garden didn't have a week off. It also didn't have a break from weeds. Luckily we spent an evening getting rid of the weeds, and we also got our first cucumber. Lots of peppers are fixing to come off as well.
Well everything is trucking right along. I even got me a tomato out of it. I also got a few tomato horn worms to boot. And more likely than not, some of my tomatoes are going to be ripe while I'm on vacation. That's life I guess.
Here you can see my first tomato, planted from a seed... The cheap seeds that they have at Wal-mart. We will eat it in a salad or make a sandwich or something. You can also see some of the damage that the horn worms did.
So here we go again (late I know) but we can see a little something...
There is definitely see some tomatoes and we have 1 pepper, but still no cucumbers. Still, we will have something, all for less than 20 bucks. The only thing that bothers me is the yellowing of the peppers and cucumbers... just sayin...
Well, I'm on schedule for this week, wonders never cease with me. Anyway, the tomatoes have rocketed up, the cucumbers have blossoms and the pepper plants have gotten stronger. I guess they could use the +90 degree days we've had. The weeds seem to outgrow all of it, but alas they have no value whatsoever. See you next week for another garden update...
Well the rain finally stopped, only to kick up again. Everything is moving right along, though I think a little too much rain and too little sunlight but nothing died, so it'll be ok. The tomatoes have flowers on them. I never would have thought that they would have done so well.
Man it is cold! I don't even remember it being this cold (yeah I know it's in the 60's, sometime in the 50's at night) this late into May. Man oh man, I need some global warming or something. And it is raining every day this week, and on into next week. Or at least they are predicting that it will rain.
Which is good for the garden... I guess. The tomatoes are looking strong, as are the cucumbers. The pepper plants were the odds on favorite and I can't figure out what has happened. But they may pull it out still, it is a long and hot (hopefully) summer.
But the rain doesn't seem to be stopping...
Well another week goes by and more surprises for me. I would put the tomatoes in 1st place, cucumbers 2nd and peppers in 3rd. It has been raining, A little almost every day, and I think that has helped. See you again next for a new update...
Ok, I'm like way late and there won't be a Classic Film Friday. But at least you know the garden is intact and doing quite well actually. The tomatoes are looking like less of a question mark, the cucumbers are growing like gang busters, the peppers not so much, but it is still early.
Anyway thanks to my cable/internet provider and/or Netflix, we could not get the roku to load more than 10 minutes at a time. It provides great time for catching up on freinds, but it does nothing for the actual movie. Next week we'll have a good one, you'll see...
Ok here goes, I know it really isn't much, but it is a garden I started from seed. You can see... if you look hard enough... cucumbers coming out. I think they will do better than anything, but we'll see.
Ok, with all the hub bub about the baby coming, and other less desirable things, like work, I have sort of neglected the whole garden... well not really, just neglected to say anything about it of post pictures etc. I got a little disheartened when a huge gully washer came in and washed out my cucumbers. They are gone, in fact we have had 2 more 3+ inches of rain days since then.
But I didn't plant the other stuff because I thought it was too weak. Good thing I waited. I have peppers coming out my ass. The tomatoes are something of a question mark, however. And that is the whole reason anybody plants a garden right? It seems like they are just too stringy, but then again, I am used to an almost bush, so as always we'll see.
I have some cucumber seeds left over, and I am going to plant them straight into the ground. 1. I don't want to spend any more money on planting them, and 2. I don't think we'll have to worry about freezes anymore. I'd really like to get into to hydroponics at this point, because my garden is little more than a hobby, and it does not make enough to feed my family or trade/sell. That's getting way ahead of myself, and honestly I haven't even priced it. But you never know, still, I will be in the market for another baby bed before a hydroponic system.
So here it is, in it's only somewhat washed out glory. We have two full rows of peppers (we forget which kind) and one row of tomatoes. The garden of 2009 is going to rule... maybe?
My daughter, the three-year-old, picked a flower. Usually it is just a piece of grass, or something off of a shrub. This time it was one of the pansies that we had forgotten . Oh well, they can survive freezes and neglect, but they can't escape the eye of a three-year-old...
So, it has been a month now and what do I see? The cucumbers are getting a bit unruly almost choking off the tomatoes, but not quite, soon, maybe even this weekend I'll transplant them
Things aren't looking so good for the flowers. Just one missed watering and half of my crop is gone. Here's looking at the other half.
Ok so I gave up on the whole winter garden thing... for this year anyway. The spinach shriveled up the broccoli just kind of stayed there, even the lettuce is starting to brown. So from here forward we are just going to worry about the summer garden. Still the winter garden got us to where we are now, and for that I am thankful.
The cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes look to have survived the great watering, or lack there of... incident. 
The flowers, at least part of them, not so much
Well it's week 22, which is for all intents and purposes 154 days of the garden. It did rain quite a bit over the weekend, and I really don't know if the Brussels Sprouts are going to do anything, but we're still getting cold weather. And the onions, of which I have 3 or 4 growing are almost ready to harvest.
On to the new, which are now in the 3rd week of existence. We had a bit of a mishap with watering. As in, not enough of it, but we'll see. Things that don't kill you make you stronger and all that. Of course if that were true, I would live forever...
The flowers are a little more damaged, again we'll see.So it was cold this past weekend, and I had the kids by myself, so we pretty much stayed inside. I can't wait for warmer weather. We were scheduled to go back to the beach... but 50-60 degree days don't really appeal to me. Sunday it was windy too, so we didn't really go anywhere. But I do have something pretty to show you.
These are the flower pots that I normally have hanging in front of my house. They've been dead for months. Or at least I thought they were dead. Here you have something that has been completely neglected, and out of that comes the beauty. Now sure as far as looks go, I'd be better off with new plants. But something that went through all of those freezes and such... I just can't simply throw that away.
Maybe I'll make it into a house plant. Then again if I do that, it will probably die. So I'll ask anybody that reads this, and has a green thumb, what should I do? The forgotten don't have to stay that way...
