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broodings from the burrow

July 2, 2008


the garden, month two
posted by soe 11:57 pm

Messy PlotRain is good for a garden. It keeps things green and lush.

It is also good for the gardener, because then she does not need to lug water from home. However, nothing comes without a price because it also means that she’s supposed to do this thing called weeding.

Clearly, this is a foreign concept to our intrepid gardener. (Don’t click on that photo, Mum. You’ll disinherit me.)

Ahem. Obviously you can guess where some of my long weekend will be spent.

Since last month, my peas and beans have grown a bit. The peas have mostly gone by for the season, but my beans are thriving. It was a mistake to plant them all together as the beans overtook the peas, so next year I’ll have a series of tee pees.

Tee Pee


A Cluster

The tomato plant I bought back in May is flourishing. I have tomato flowers, I have little tomatoes, and I have bigger tomatoes that look like they might like to turn colors and come home with me later this month.

I also bought four cherry tomato plants at the farmers’ market that I’ve already harvested from. Granted, I bought the plants with little green tomatoes on them, so perhaps that’s not as much of an accomplishment as I’d like to think. But still, those little tomatoes could have dropped off without ripening.

Alas, all is not tomatoes and beans in my garden. Something ate my broccoli before I got a shot. Whatever it was had a fondness for broccoli leaves, since they didn’t even let the broccoli florets begin to exist before they’d devoured it. I had picked a new spot for the plants last year as opposed to last year’s location; I’m not sure if that mattered, but since they excelled last year, I’ll be trying for a fall crop back in the old spot late next month.

Squash Blossoms

Last year I heeded everyone’s advice and only planted a few squash seeds. Unfortunately, I then ended up with only a few squash. It was entirely unsatisfactory, so this year I opted to plant a whole bunch. (I have no idea how many. I poked six holes and dropped a bunch of seeds into each one.)

I will not lack in squash this year. I will have both yellow squash and zucchini — and I can’t wait.

I plan to plant pumpkin seeds this weekend. It may be a little late getting started on them, but I figure we have a long growing season, so it’s worth a shot even at this point.

Last but not least, I leave you with this week’s harvest — a few peas and several types of beans. I think they’ll be part of tomorrow night’s supper.

Harvest

Category: garden. There is/are 2 Comments.



Weeds – I think that’s the predominant plant in the Queen’s garden!!! And you should see the stones in the sidewalk – oh wait – you can’t! Because of pup, I don’t want to spray them, which means getting down and pulling them out one by stinking one! Last time we did that, it took two of us about three full days. I keep waiting for a nice day – think you’ll have to walk the jungle when next you are home!

Comment by Mum 07.03.08 @ 10:21 am

Ah, I love (and miss) gardening so much! Thanks for sharing these photos. I especially love the last one with the orange (bag? paper?) highlighting the green of the beans.

Comment by dewey 07.03.08 @ 11:11 am