Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Mid-Summer's garden report.

I've been waiting to post my garden report in a fit of superstition.  It seems that every time I post a garden report we get hit with hail and all my lovely almost veggies get beat up and I have to go and buy my produce for the year.  :'(

Well this year my garden has been extremely slow going thanks to the very late start we got from the late freezes and then all the rain we were getting.  Perhaps I'm just not allowed to have a garden?  I don't know.

Here's the old location of my garden. 
old garden with volunteer plants.
I picked this location when we first bought the house as it was a nice sunny place that got everything my plants need.  As you can see, some plants still do well here.  But as you can also see, it doesn't get the sun it used to.  Thanks to these...

Apple tree, came with house.

Pine tree was 4 ft 10 years ago!
But even with all the shade, some of my plants continue to thrive in the old location.

Looks like I get spinach for lunch today! :D
These are all volunteer plants (seeds from previous years).  Sorry about the weeds, I've been neglecting it for a while.



Of course over the years the trees grew and started shading the garden space. So I had to move the garden. I still haven't done anything that is permanent yet as I'm trying to figure out where the plants like to live the best. So I picked this location due to it being good for plants and I wanted to prevent Lilly from jumping off the retaining wall and hurting her leg anymore.

peppers with tomatoes in the back.

Zucchini appears to be all male flowers.

Hey!  I finally have two green beans!
the green bean planter, zucchini in the back there.
Lettuce is coming in.  Herbs in the green planter.


cherry tomatoes.




We also suffered quite a setback with my tomatoes.  I bought these planter boxes not really realizing that they were a grow system.  I just wanted the boxes because they were portable and they have this water reservoir in the bottom.  I didn't realize that they came with fertilizer also.  Which is great, the plants exploded!




Unfortunately due to the fertilizer ratios, while I got huge plants loaded with fruit...I also ended up with this...




This is blossom end rot.  :'(  It causes the fruit to ripen early, but be totally unusable and rotten inside.  So I've had to go pick as much as I can find and then go back to the garden center and get some Lime to add to the plants to give them enough calcium to grow. 
The good news is that some of the later tomatoes show no signs of rot and hopefully we'll get some more flowers before our season is over. 
I'm also hoping that I can (with help) move the pots to my back porch when the temperatures start dropping and extend my growing season.  I might even fashion some "green houses" over the pots if I can keep them healthy enough to continue to produce.

Fingers crossed!



6 comments:

  1. I think your garden looks great and I like the new spot. Are you thinking of making it permanent there? For the blossom end rot, you can also get a calcium spray at most garden centers. It works pretty quickly so you don't have to waste too many tomatoes!

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    1. I saw the spray but the lime was much cheaper and seems to be doing the job quite well. And I have a ton of it in case I need it.

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  2. It's a shame about the blossom end rot, but good to you to figure it out in time to still get some good tomatoes! Everything looks great, isn't it wonderful to have had a year without any hailstorms destroying the garden?

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  3. I sure hope you have some wind chimes hanging out there, to enjoy the cool, evening breezes of Anytown, U-S-A!

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  4. :(

    Sorry about your veggies.

    A garden is my dream. I've now written that on two posts in a row. Maybe next summer. Fingers crossed :)

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