Jungle Garden Update

This is the first picture of my corn patch. As you can see, it's pushing 7 feet tall! The only plants taller right now are the sunflowers, which you can see behind the corn. The beans have been making a comeback since the Japanese beetle's have disappeared, but still no beans to pick yet!

The bushy plants around the base of the corn and beans are basil, oregano, and nasturtiums.

I planted the nasturtiums from seed and have seen one bloom so far. They may be one to either start indoors early, or purchase the plant.

Somewhere in there I might have some garlic and onions growing, but I'm not counting on it.

The beans and cherry tomatoes are getting friendly! They are growing together across the boxes. It makes a nice little tunnel for the likes of Jacob. I have to duck to get through.

Zucchini still going strong. We harvested 4 large ones this week! Jason made zucchini bread, and I made zucchini soup, and we still gave some away.

I did harvest our first peppers this week--no pictures. 2 little cayenne peppers the size of my pinky fingers, and 1 banana pepper. I don't think the bell peppers are getting the sunlight or space they need to produce. They have flowered several times, but I have yet to see any peppers growing on them. Admittedly, it is hard to see through the tomato jungle.

I guess the crookneck squash, above, just needed more water. Since it has rained so much this week, several little squash have started growing. We haven't harvested any for a couple of weeks now.

We harvested 2 more foot-long cucumbers this week, along with several more cherry tomatoes of both varieties, and even a couple of the slicing tomatoes. Loving this stage of the garden!

The lovely white bucket is the compost bucket for garden clippings.

New growth

The dastardly Japanese beetles haven't gotten the best of my rose bush yet! The purple leaves are all new growth put on within the last 2 weeks. Incidentally, haven't seen any beetles around since the temperature dipped into the 80's last week. Hooray!

Renovations

Box 1, Round 2

As my husband so astutely observed, I'm more of a planter than a weeder. So after the peas, potatoes, and onions were gone, I spent a little of my flower money on these bright annuals to take up some space, and planted beets in the space that was left. Much better option than bare ground, which would then fill with weeds.

Notes of interest:

The zinnias have already attracted at least 2 different kinds of butterflies! They would be a good choice for filler in my big flower beds next spring.

The sunflowers are looking great because it has just rained twice in the last couple of days, but they were really drooping before that. Another reminder NOT to plant anything in July, unless you plan to pour water on it every day. I figured they would do okay in the vegetable box, because I water those at least 2x per week. Thank goodness for this rain!

Look how awesome the beans are doing! Also, I didn't get a close enough shot to be able to tell, but the carrots and the beets have just come up. We'll see how this goes--it is my first attempt at doing fall crops.

Harvest

Awesome harvest this week! 2 huge cucumbers, 2 good-sized zucchini, last of the peas--there were more than I thought--last of the potatoes and onions, and as you can see, several cherry tomatoes. The red ones are the "Sweet 100" variety, and the yellow are "Sun Sugar." So far we prefer the Sun Sugar for their tangy, more fruity taste.

Flowerbed Philosophy

I like flowers with bright colors, generally, and blooms that will stay pretty for a long time. Perennials, preferrably, although I will plant some annuals to fill-in gaps.

As for maintenance, basically, once I put the plants in I expect them to fend for themselves. If it rains, they get watered. I try to give a little extra TLC to shrubs and newly-planted flowers, but really, it's not much. So I've learned to choose plants that aren't very fussy.

Under the my kind of regime, native flowers tend to do the best--see the beautiful purple cone-flowers above. This year, I've also been impressed with the purple salvias. Love the color, and as long as I do some dead-heading now and then, they just keep right on blooming.

These are two different varieties. Both are doing well in full-sun with little care.

Wow! that was fast!

I can't believe these bush beans have already sprouted! Jacob and I planted them last Friday and they're already 3 inches tall. Maybe we will get some beans this year...

Go away Japanese beetles!

Here it is: bug enemy #1. These beetles are eating my beans, roses, and apple tree leaves to ribbons. Apparently there's a bag-trap device you can get for them, but if your yard is the only one in the vicinity to have the beetles, the traps actually attract more to your yard. Not helpful!
As Jason says, I guess the only solution is putting up the traps in your neighbor's yard.... One of our ward members who has lived here a long time says that the beetles are almost done for the year, but that it has been a really bad year for them.

Maybe my bush beans, if I can get them planted this week, will grow up beetle free and we'll actually harvest some beans this year. So far my pole beans are so busy trying to grow new leaves to replace the shredded ones that nary a bean has been seen.

As grubs they kill your grass too. I wonder if that would account for the brown patches in our back lawn that I've noticed lately. Grr.

Chore List

1. Plant carrots and bush beans in empty squares in box 1 (where potatoes used to be).
2. Figure out what the green beetle is that is decimating my pole beans, rose bush, and apple tree. Kill the beetles (and keep good bugs)!
3. Add compost to all boxes.
4. (sigh) weed flowerbeds

Thunder and lightning waking me up early. Yay for garden! No watering needed this week.

Potato Harvest

"Yukon Gold" variety (with a few onions thrown in)

Another unforseen effect of going on vacation: we returned to our potato plants brown and crispy. No hope of redemption. So I decided to dig up whatever potatoes we had before they rotted in the ground. Look what I found!

Potato harvesting is fun! It's like a treasure hunt: sticking your spade into the soil, not knowing what you will bring up. Jacob helped me put each one in the basket, saying "Tato, tato."

I planted 6 squares of potatoes this year, with 4-5 pieces of the seed potatoes per square. This is the harvest from 5 of the 6 squares. I'm so pleased! I'm sure we would have gotten more of the big size if they had been able to grow until frost. As it is, so far we have enjoyed our new potatoes mashed, and in soup.

I've got one more potato plant that seems to be hanging in there, so I decided to try and keep it going for awhile longer.

Vegetable Jungle

This being my first try at square-foot gardening, I didn't know what to expect. I think I'm growing a vegetable jungle! These pictures were taken 2 weeks ago and everything has grown taller and bushier since then.

The tomatoes have reached the top of the trellis and are still growing up and out. They are beginning to come together between boxes. Even the marigolds pictured here have almost doubled in mass. One of the cucumber vines (back-right going up the trellis) died while we were on vacation.

These cages are actually supporting the pepper plants, which you can't see at all in this picture, due to the tomatoes crowding in.

Yellow crookneck squash going for broke. (Today the garden box, tomorrow the world!) Interesting: when we got back from vacation last week, 1 of the 3 yellow squash plants above had died completely. Perhaps it was not able to compete with the other two for nutrients.

What I would change next time:

1--Separate the tomatoes from the squash, or run the squash up the trellis and let the tomatoes have more room.

According to the square-foot method, tomatoes only need one square foot if they're the indeterminate type and you train them up the trellis. Otherwise they need 9 per plant and a good strong cage. Squash need either 2 squares next to the trellis if they are climbers, or 9 squares per plant.

I'm no good at tomato trellis training, as it turns out. So I think I would be better off with the tomatoes in their own 9-square space with a little breathing room. Which means I will need bigger boxes or more of them to grow all the tomatoes I would want.

These squash could fill up one whole 4x4 box all by themselves at the rate they're going. I would just as soon have them growing up a trellis. However, I didn't find any of the climbing varieties for sale, either seeds or plants at the my local garden centers. So I suppose I would need to order seeds from a catalog for that. I like both squash and zucchini so I want them in my garden, but wow are they space-hogs!

Welcome to my garden

This will be a place for my gardening-related thoughts, plans, successes, failures, and even some mundane things like chore lists and notations on the weather.

Welcome! Let's get to it!