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! 

July 24 - Vegetable Garden

Wow, I have been horrible with the updates lately, haven't I?  Life is busy and sometimes things like this get over looked more than I realize!  

The vegetable garden is doing quite well despite the lack of rain and intense heat we've had lately.  There are a couple zucchini that are ready to be used, one of which will be grilled as part of tonight's dinner.  We have been enjoying salads made with fresh lettuce for a couple of weeks. And today, I see that there are some beets that are big enough to be used.

Unfortunately, the broccoli has had a run in with cabbage worms.  I have been working hard to pick and squish as many of the worms that I can and have been spraying the plants with soapy water to deter the rest. I have my fingers crossed that I will still have broccoli, but we will have to wait and see.

And of course, as always, the weeds are thriving!  But I have been doing a pretty good job of keeping ahead of them.

Here are some photos I took today.

Zucchini that will be grilled for dinner! :)

Cucumbers!

Tomato, slowly starting to ripen!

Lots and lots of little romas!

Broccoli has seen better days.

Red potatoes aren't liking this heat very much.

But the white ones are doing fine!

The Vegetable Garden

June 18/19 - Vegetable Garden

Another late post, but better late than never, right?

We arrived home from vacation on June 14th and it was immediately obvious that my garden had been neglected!  The weeds were taking over!  I wasn't really surprised, but it needed my immediate attention!

This is what my garden looked like when I got home from vacation.

Doesn't Mother Nature have enough places to grow wild stuff?  Why does she have to fill my garden too?

After a couple of hours, I was making some progress, but not as quickly as I would have liked.

When Henry saw how long it was taking me to get through the weeds, he suggested using the garden tiller between the rows, so that I could just concentrate on right close to the plants and hopefully, get done more quickly!  I was thrilled with the idea and it worked wonders!!

A row before Henry tilled it.

The same row, after tilling . . . so much better!

Finished!  Henry tilling between the row allowed me to finish the garden in one afternoon!

Despite being overrun with weeds, I was very pleasantly surprised with how well everything was growing.

Lettuce

Tomato plant . . . with a little tomato!

Pepper.

Broccoli.

Carrots.

Potatoes.

Cucumber.

Zucchini.

Got poop?

Last year, the vegetable garden didn't produce quite as well as I would have liked.  The history of my vegetable garden is that I started it the first summer that we lived here (2003) and because I didn't have a lot of time between the melting of the snow and planting time, it wasn't very big.  But each spring after that I would dig out as much more as I had time for between snow and planting until I finally, in 2007, got it as big as I want it, well, it is as big as it can get, sometimes I would like it to be a bit bigger, but this is it!  I don't think that I got any kind of fertilizer on it the first year, and there was a year or two that I bought bags of fertilizer and then for a couple years after that, I had a neighbor bring me some manure from his farm for it.  But it has been a few years since I've put any kind of anything on it.  I know that the newest part has never had anything put on it.  Like I said, last year, the garden really didn't do as well as I would have liked, especially the newest end, so I knew that we had to do something this year.

So, on Easter weekend, while visiting my family, we took full advantage of the fact that we have a truck and the fact that my grandfather is a beef farmer with a big old manure pile in the field.  My uncle filled up the back of the truck with some good old poop . . . in my opinion, the very best fertilizer that there is . . . not only because it works, but also because it is FREE!!!!  

We spent a couple of hours on Easter Monday unloading it from the truck and spreading it on the garden.  Although we could have used a little more, it covered most of the garden.  Now, it can just sit there and let some April Showers spread it's goodness through the soil before we till and then plant the garden!!