The Vegetable Garden - July 8, 2012

The vegetable garden is doing quite well considering that the weeds are trying to take over.  So far, I am winning the battle, but only time will tell who wins the war.  Another challenge this year is a huge lack of rain.  It is only the first week of July and I am already having to put the sprinklers on the garden ever night, hoping that it will be enough.  The final challenge that has reared it's head since I last posted is woolly aphids on the potatoes.  But I will do a separate post on these little critters.

Take a look at how things are growing!

Zucchini flowers and a baby zucchini!

There are lots of tomato flowers and every plant has little tomatoes!

Pepper flowers and a jalapeno pepper!  No sweet peppers yet, but they were later to start flowering.

Carrots and Onions.

Potato plants and potato flowers!  

Cucumber flowers, but no baby cucumbers yet.

Soon it will be fresh lettuce from the garden for salads!

The Vegetable Garden - June 19, 2012

Despite being full of weeds when we got home from our weekend of camping, the vegetable garden is doing well.

Lettuce and beets are coming a little more slowly than some years, but they are both in the shadier end of the garden.  The shade doesn't seem to be bothering the swiss chard and kale though!

Cucumbers and zucchini are growing like crazy, even the cucumbers that were slow to come up are catching up with the rest.

Tomatoes and peppers all seem to have had a huge growth spurt recently!

Carrots and onions are continuing to grow steadily.

And the potatoes are growing like mad!  I can not believe how big they are getting and how quickly!  I can almost taste fresh fried potatoes! 

Don't look at the weeds, but you can see the little rows of soon to be salad!

Jalapeno Pepper flower!

Roma Tomato.

Tomato Flower.

Potatoes . . . if they keep growing like this they won't be plants, they will be trees!

The Vegetable Garden - June 10, 2012

The vegetable garden is continuing to come to life as the days pass.  Most of the seeds are at least starting to come up.  The only thing that hasn't come up yet is the potatoes and they were planted later than everything else.

Orange peppers, jalepeno peppers, roma tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.

Carrots.

Onions.

Zucchini.

Cucumbers.

Kale.

Lettuce.

Swiss Chard

Early Friday evening, we got a huge downpour of rain.  I could tell from the house that a large portion of the garden was covered in water, so I took the camera to assess the damage.  At the time, I was worried for the tomato plants as some of them were in the middle of large puddles, but they seem to have all come out fine!

The garden after Friday's downpour.

It's Alive!! - The Vegetable Garden

Slowly but surely, I am starting to see signs of life in the vegetable garden . . . 

First there were a couple little cucumbers popping through the soil. 

(Friday, May 25)

Then onions!

(Saturday, May 26)

And then there was zucchini!

(Monday, May 28)

Today, we have lettuce!!

(Wednesday, May 30)

Cucumbers!

The cucumbers are almost ready to pop out their next set of leaves!  So exciting! 

Victoria Day Weekend

As always, Victoria Day weekend is my garden planting weekend and despite having other commitments for much of that weekend, I still managed to get my gardening mostly accomplished!

There was a lot of preparation before the garden could be planted.  Despite every year saying "Next year I will get it tilled early and not have it overgrown with weeds when I want to plant it" the vegetable garden was overgrown with weeds when it was time to plant.

It took me a couple of hours of digging to get all the weeds out and then Henry tilled it for me and I was ready to go!

On Victoria Day, I planted carrots, beets, onions, lettuce (2 kinds), cucumbers (3 kinds), zucchini, swiss chard and kale in the vegetable garden.  I also planted basil, dill, cilantro and parsley in the herb garden.

Because I was so busy leading up to my planting weekend, I hadn't had the time to buy tomato and pepper plants or seed potatoes, but they went in this past weekend.

The vegetable garden ... over grown with weeds!

Yikes!  What was I thinking?

If you ignore the weeds, they do not go away, they get bigger!

Tilled and ready to plant!  Thanks Henry!

Let's do it!

Seeds are all planted!!

I know, not much to see, but it was a nice feeling of accomplishment!

The herb garden ... also overrun with weeds.

Apparently stirring up the soil woke up a million little seeds!

Weeds gone (for now!) and seeds planted!

Tomato and pepper plants planted! 

Tomatoes in their new home!

Grow little tomato grow!

Orange pepper this year!

I think I was mistaken when I sent Henry to the store to get 10 pounds of seed potatoes, it was a lot more than I expected!!

But they are all (3 rows) tucked in tight, hope they start to grow soon!