Early June Garden Updates 2020

I truly don't have as much planted as I hoped.  We have had some rather crazy weather. But plants are happening, little by little.

On May 30, there were thunder storms and downpours.  So I covered the most delicate of the plants to keep them from getting knocked down.

Protecting beans, broccoli and cauliflower	Protecting Corn
Protecting Onions and Garlic

Monday was great. I was able to get the tomatoes transplanted into buckets. This year, we are going to put the buckets into the ground (as shown in photos below) and put plastic tarps and bark mulch around the buckets so that we don't have to mow around them, and can protect them from the winds and rains during the summer months.

Comparison of plants	Cloned Starts are almost 3x larger
Keep Ants/Slugs away from Strawberries	Corn was started inside this year!
Oregano thriving 2nd Cutting	Potatoes starting to bud/bloom
Creeping Rosemary transplanted

More Blossoms in July

The temps have been cool, and the humidity has been higher with unseasonably muggy weather. Yesterday, we did finally hit 80F, but we had a quick night-time cool down and today we are back in the 60s for the day. That's fine for the potatoes which are in "cure" state as the leaves are all dying. July 31 will be our dig out date. 

The Square Garden is filling in nicely.  The blossoms on the bush beans are turning white and preparing to open. The Dill is filling in nicely, and the basil smells so wonderful. The radishes that I replanted are sprouting, and the carrots that I replanted are filling in the rows. The thyme is growing, so we will see how that turns out.  I've never grown thyme before.  

Bean Blossoms, Dill and Basil

Beans, Dill, Basil, Thyme & Carrots

Basil, Two carrot rows and Radishes

The various stages of the cucumbers. One has started to bloom which you can see through the leaves in the blue bucket on the right. All together, there are six plants. Also, the oregano is ready to harvest for the second time.  If I don't cut it this week, it will bolt, so now or forget about it. 

Six Cucumber Plants in a row

Cucumber Blossoms Forming

Time for 2nd Harvest of Oregano

The poor damaged bell peppers are finally showing signs of survival. The lettuce is also thriving. This has actually been perfect weather for lettuce.  I don't even have to keep it in the shade.

Bell Peppers have Improved

Grand Rapid & Red Sails Leaf Lettuce

Red Sails and Buttercrunch Lettuce

The first of the Sun golds are about ready to pick. Sorry for the blurry - the wind kept moving them. Plus, we have a lot of green fruit on the Sun gold. The Chocolate Cherry Tomatoes are just starting to form. 

Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes looking golden

Green Sun Gold cherry tomatoes

Finally, some Chocolate Cherries

End of June 2019 Garden Update

We had some good old fashioned thunderstorms the past couple of days that passed directly over us. I had left an empty cup outside on the table, not really intending to use it as a rain gauge, but that's what happened.  We accumulated over two inches of rain in the cup.  While I don't know how "accurate" that is, that amount is quite a bit more than the weather station's 0.3" measurement that is just up the road from us. Nonetheless, everything is well watered for the start of July and in anticipation of July 4th Fireworks.  The past few days, I could not really get any good photos of the gardens and plants. Today is a catchup for that with an addendum to the square garden post of a few days ago.

Starting with the square garden area.  The beans need a good dose of fertilizer.

A couple of the Bush Bean Plants

I attempted to take photos of the basil and thyme, but they are still just too small for a clear shot.  I can only find three basil in the garden!  There are about twenty of the thyme, so that will definitely be thinned out.  I planted three more basil in hopes that they come up. But it is a bit late in the season for planting basil outside. We will see.

Tiny Basil from Overhead

Tiny Basil from Side

Even Tinier Thyme

And with the forest of carrots, I'm still trying to get carrot sprouts pulled out from everything else.

Yep - Carrots scattered Every Where!

Carrots or Dill? Hard to Tell!

As you can tell that I'm still thinning out the over scatter of carrots between the rows, but a few more days and we should be on track.

Two Distinct Carrot Rows, finally.

A close up of the carrot rows shows the gaps that need to be filled back in with new seeds.

Sparse Carrot Rows

But, hey, the first of the radishes are really to be pulled and pickled.

Some Radishes are Ready

I was reading about Square Foot Gardening, and how they plant everything within a square foot section of the garden, depending on what the plant was. Like planting 16 radishes in one square foot space, and one tomato plant in a 1 square foot spot.... and then they used vermiculite in the soil to keep it more moist, and I thought what?  Why use vermiculite when so much of it has asbestos in it.  How are they going to guarantee that the vermiculite doesn't have asbestos in it when 75% of all vermiculite in the US has asbestos in it, naturally? Um... No Way!  Plus the raised beds were only about six inches deep so how would one grow the plants that need deep soil like onions and potatoes, or those plants that spread out all over like squash and cucumbers?  I think my bucket garden is akin to the Square Foot Garden, plus it is portable when necessary, fits easily into the green house when needed, etc. That's just me thinking out loud there. Sorry about that.

Moving to the Potato Barrels - they have sprouted up for the last time and now that the blossoms have fallen off, the foliage will start to die back in prep of getting our much anticipated potato crop. With the cooler weather, on and off again, it has actually been helpful for extending the season to allow the potatoes to get a bit larger.  I am hopeful that we get a lot of nice-sized potatoes this year.

The last Spurt of Growth.

Blossoms are all gone.

Now the Corn Patch which has more foliage, but not much more height as we head into July. The PVC is strateglically placed to ward off the animals that like to barge through the stalks.  Once they are tall enough, I won't need the PVC distractions. 

Corn Patch with Animal Deterrent.

As for the bucket garden, the bell peppers are picking back up after that hail storm of early July. 

Sweet Bell Pepper

The three types of lettuce are progressing: Grand Rapids, Butter Crunch, and Red Sails (left to right, in that order, I think).  I did not plant spinach this spring.  I will plant it later in the summer. I should probably try to plant a few more Red Sails and Grand Rapids seeds to fill in the empty areas.  

Grand Rapids & Butter Crunch

Butter Crunch & Red Sails

The earlier planted cucumbers are truly growing quicker than I anticipated. The recent "replants" of the cukes are still pretty small but do seem to be working on survival, as long as the animals stay away.  I have the baby cukes closer to the house.

Baby Cuke Plants

English Cucumber

Better Photo of the Onion Flowering

Oregano getting ready for 2nd harvest.

Here's an angle shot of the tomatoes, more bell peppers, cucumbers, the start of the green house addition and the square garden in the back, protected with fencing from the blasted deer, dogs/coyotes, and bunnies. 

Angle Shot of plants, green house, addition and garden.

First Wall of Green house Extension. 

And that, for the most part, sums up our crazy micro garden journal thus far in 2019.

Square Garden June 30 - update photos.  

Now that I have it all weeded AND all the scattered carrots pulled, we can actually see some of the plants :)  So the first two are facing south, with the bush beans at the top and the carrots at the bottom of the photo (top photo is listed and circled).  The last photo is facing north with the radishes at the top, then the two rows of sparse carrots.  Either direction, it is difficult to see the still very tiny thyme, but there are lot of them which will be thinned out in a few weeks. 

Most of the crop - facing south Listed/ and/orCircled

 Same - beans, dill, basil, thyme, carrots

North - radishes, carrotsx2, thyme, basil

First Weekend of June Planting

I know, I'm about two weeks late on many of the summer plants, but I did get the seeds in the ground today. 

Planted today:

• Lettuce 3 types, 5 per pot
• Cucumbers 4 plants, 3 pots (I trellis them between pots)
• Radishes 1 row
• Carrots 2 rows (intended to plant 4 short rows but changed layout of garden, see below)
• Thyme 1 row
• Basil 1 row
• Dill 1 row
• Bush Beans 1 row

There will be a lot of thinning over the next few weeks.  I way over planted everything.

This particular garden bed was a mess of roots and blackberry vines that came up through the bottom of the garden. The snakes were not in this garden under the "weed killing tarp" tilling it up for me. Plus I had to take a spade to get deep into the soil to dig out the stupid wild blackberry vines, and get the weed roots dug/broke up. I "hand tilled" with a shove, pulled out weeds/roots, threw on a thin layer of manure before raking/leveling and planting. I am hopeful that I got the majority of the roots and that they won't "re-root."  

This past month, I had a hard time keeping the tarp in place on this bed because this bed is more exposed to the winds, and the storms kept blowing the tarp back, exposing the edges of the soil to the rain and stuff. It took me the better part of Saturday to get the soil ready to plant. I have a "cage" around this garden bed because, with the bed being out away from the house, the crazy dogs, cats, coyotes and deer like to romp in it. I included a photo (more for my memory of what's where) of the rows of herbs and vegetables that are in this bed.

Remember that before I threw the tarp on that garden bed, I had pulled out a bunch of wintered over onions? Some are struggling to grow. Two, however, have started to flower.  They grew some really thick stalks with one big flower bud at the top of that stalk. I have read that if I allow it to continue until it is dead/dried, that I can shake the seeds from the flower into an envelope and plant them early next spring in the greenhouse. It will drain all the nutrients from the onion in the process. Worth the try, I guess. 

Day Three - Corn

In the other raised "corn" bed, half of the corn have come up. That's a pretty fast start - I planted mostly germinated seeds just three days ago! I counted 20 little sprouts today.  I have my PVC in place in case I need to cover to protect the plants.  The weather temps are supposed to turn cold (low 60s as the highs) later this week. I have the floating row cover all ready to toss over the corn bed for those days to protect the tender growth and keep the ground warmer.

With that, my Micro Garden is on its way.  Finger Crossed!!!! 

I took some more photos today.

Bigger Garden Bed
Corn Sprouts on 6/2/19	Some Sprouts Circled - PVC in place.
Cut Oregano Drying	Potato Barrels
Berries Starting to Ripen