My Boring Life
I guess I was wrong, the carrots are happy!
There’s five varieties in that picture, two orange, yellow, white, and purple.
Either that or they’re desperately trying to produce before the weather kills them…..
Cause its awfully early to have tomatoes ripening too……
We had a few days of nice sunny (hot!) summer before we get buried under more rain. So some more photos!
First cucumbers of the summer, and one of the cucumber tires.
my zucchini plant is not happy, but I got my first one of the season off of it
Carrots LOOK really happy, but I’m not convinced that they’re not just reaching for the sun in desperation……
Bill Bean Tomatoes. I’m thinking we have another magnesium deficiency here, all of the tomato tires got treated with epsom salts just in case.
Black Plum tomatoes. I had a couple spare traditional tomato cages, so I plopped them on top of the home made ones for some extra height. Not sure its going to work long term, but whatever….
Black Gypsy tomatoes
Green Nutmeg Melon. This is one of the ones I had to completely restart from seed. Cross your fingers!
Baby Corn
Itsy Bitsy baby Habanero peppers
As of Tuesday evening I’ve been able to get into the garden again!
I spent Wednesday weed whacking most of the weeds down. My arm didn’t hurt for the weedwhacking, but it sure hurt the next day. Oh well. Annoying too, because I totally missed a row….
Planted out the 2nd attempt at most of the melons.
Weeded, and mulched with straw. Ran out of straw, and keep forgetting to get more.
Haven’t gotten the 2nd layer of tomato cages on, and I’m not sure its worth bothering at this point, I guess I’ll just let them fall all over.
Its basically not stopped raining. Oh Wednesday was dry enough I could weedwhack, but that was it. Its been constant rain. There’s standing water everywhere (hello mosquitos!) and even my raised beds are completely saturated. Thankfully most of the plants seem to be doing ok despite it.
How much has it been raining? Well, last week Watertown NY (north of me by a couple hours) got more rain in one day than they normally get for the entire month of June. And in Utica NY they had this problem today.
Garden pictures hopefully tomorrow. If the rain will let up enough to let me take them.
I have Tree Swallows nesting in the nest box closest to the garden. I had to move that box a bit further from the garden a few years ago, when the nesting pair got fussy about me being in the garden while there were chicks in the nest, but haven’t had any issues since. Well, not seriously, they get fussy about me working the row closest to the nest when there are chicks in the nest, but that’s manageable……
Till this year.
As I was planting those pepper plants last week (Wednesday) the Swallows started fussing when I walked the row closest to them. I figured the babies were hatching, tis the season.
Friday I had a few minutes and headed out to do a little weeding…..and got driven out of my garden by dive bombing Swallows before I’d gotten the furthest row done!
Dammit, its MY garden! I was here first!
I like Tree Swallows, they eat mosquitos, and deer flies, and the like. But they don’t get to claim my garden either. Once this set of babies leaves the nest I’m going to have to move the box again……..
Despite Husband’s and my best efforts the weeds are trying to take over the garden. I shouldn’t be surprised I guess, considering I was trying to do everything with a bad arm (which is mostly back to normal at this point, thankfully).
Remember this baby tomato seedling?
I planted it a month ago today.
Here it is today:
ALready in need of a 2nd cage. So much for not overwhelming myself with tomatoes this year.
Also, Bill Bean Tomatoes:
and Black Gypsy Tomatoes:
The corn bed, which has turned into potatoes and corn:
a volunteer Melon Pear plant!
There was a BUNCH of them in the two tires that I had the Melon Pears in last year. I might not have been able to tell the fruit was ripe, but clearly that didn’t matter!
This year’s Melon Pear plants:
Jalapenos:
Black Pearl Peppers:
This year’s incredibly wet spring resulted in over 90% of my sunflower seeds not even sprouting, and more than half of what did sprout just dying. I’m going to have exactly TWO sunflower plants this year. Dammit. I debated just covering the now empty tires with black plastic for the season, but decided this was my chance to try a BUNCH of different hot peppers. Baby plants arrived today. Hopefully the season will last long enough to get a decent crop!
I also had to restart a bunch of melon plants, for what is likely the same cause. Though SOMETHING (insect not mammel) was munching the hell out of them too. Not happy, though at least there everything is short season enough it should work out.
BTW, I didn’t even get those tomato seeds started till AFTER I broke my arm. So beginning of April. And they were still that big when I planted them mid-May. I started 3 of the Black Plums for a friend and he couldn’t get over how big the seedlings were in comparison to the store bought ones he usually buys. I have no clue what I do thats so different, but clearly it works……
I also got the deer fly traps setup and out today, a bit later than planned, but hopefully early enough to keep them from being a pain this summer!
Everything’s planted, caged, got its water hose set, and mulched with straw!
Volunteer rattail radishes. I knew I didn’t get them all picked last year, I didn’t realize how many I didn’t get picked. Nice to know they’ll reseed in my climate though.
Volunteer potatoes. I guess there were more surviving potatoes than I realized!
Black Pearl peppers, seeds given to me by a friend of mine.
Black Plum tomato. Still my favorite tomato. Mostly because of the flavor, but also for the reason shown in the picture above. Thats a two-foot tall seedling, standing happily on its own. They barely need caging till they’re closer to 4ft tall.
Those are my seedlings, tomato, pepper, melon, etc, waiting for the weather to warm up enough for them to be planted, picture taken last night. Average last frost is today. If the weather predictions hold I might be able to start planting out tomorrow. Tonight we’re supposed to drop to the low 40’s, but after that….the lowest they’re predicting is 50 for the next 10 days. The tires keep the dirt warm enough that I can plant as soon as air temps allow me to. The lights in the picture are C9 non-LED christmas lights, they produce enough heat to keep the little greenhouses nice and warm.
Course, planting is going to be an exercise in frustration too. I still don’t have full use of my right arm yet, its better, but not 100%.
Donno if its just the extra few days, or if the steroids and inhaler did the trick, but I can breathe, and although I’m still coughing I don’t feel like I’m hacking up my lungs anymore either. Woot!
I finally managed to plan out my garden for the coming summer, and now desperately need to get seeds started. And heck, ordered, as I never even finished that.
Empty holes are so I have fiddle room. Once everything else is planted they’ll be filled with sunflowers and lettuce.
Gotta do taxes, now that I can think again.
Gotta finish this woodworking project.
Heading back into work today, for the first time in over a week, they ought to be thrilled.
Its been absolutely lovely here the last few days, I spent some time just enjoying the sun. Even saw Bluebirds yesterday!
