Going into a long holiday weekend here is where the garden stands:
The peas petered out and I pulled them two days ago. Next year I will definitely plant more because fresh peas are YUM!
The lettuce is finally beginning to bolt. The first bed was planted on March 17 I think, so it has taken forever due to colder-than-normal temperatures and lots of rain this year. I grew the lettuce as an experiment just to see how it grows and basically to learn about it for the future. My understanding is that lettuce reproduces true from seed so I am letting two beds go to seed to see how much I can collect for next year.
Carrots were another experiment with a happy ending. Most have been 5-6 inches so far, which is about right for the type I planted. Next year I plan to have a deeper bed available to try to grow some grocery store sized ones! They are delicious too — I’m not a big carrot fan but the ones from the garden disappear fast.
Garlic is yet another very happy experiment. Talk about easy! A friend of the family donated some bulbs last year and told us to plant them in September. Around October I remembered them and spent all of two minutes shoving them into the ground. I had no idea what I was doing, and one big mistake was that I planted the entire bulb instead of separating them into individual cloves… Live and learn.
All winter I’d look where I planted the garlic and see snow and dirt. I remember thinking I had blown it. But come spring these emerald green leaves sprouted out of the ground very early and BOOM they were off and growing. So far they have received zero care other than watering when the entire garden needs it. Now they are about a week or two from harvest. I can see where 4-6 stalks shot out of each bulb, so who knows what kind of monster deformed garlic lies underneath my soil? At any rate, I have enjoyed growing garlic so much that I might try to obtain some heirloom varieties and see what happens with them.
There are about 4-5 yellow squash ready to pick this weekend. The zucchini is behind because the first sowing failed to grow. I’m keeping a close eye on the underside of the leaves for egg clusters.
Green beans didn’t germinate well at all in spite of using innoculant. Not happy at all with the green beans this year.
Out of 6 cucumber seed planted 4 germinated and only 2 lived to maturity. Those two are growing several inches a day and I can see yellow flowers underneath the leaves so they are doing just fine!
Tomatoes have been a challenge. About half developed Tomato Leaf Curl several weeks ago. Research indicated it was probably due to overwatering. We have had steady rain all year and between times I was doing supplemental watering. So I stopped the supplemental watering a couple weeks ago and the tomatoes are growing like weeds!
The eggplants are finally recovering from the bugs that ate the leaves as soon as I put them in the ground. That is good, but I’d say they are about 3 weeks behind where they should be.
In fact, the entire garden seems to be about 2-3 weeks behind where it was last year. It has been unseasonably cool for the most part with rain showers every 2-3 days for the past two months.
That’s where MWG stands as of today. Have a safe and happy Independence Day!
