Tuesday, May 20, 2014

What's Growing On?

A garden update, mostly in pictures, while I sit by the phone waiting for a swarm call ...


Strawberries flowering under their rhubarb canopy. We already had a rhubarb knotweed cake, using this recipe, but substituting half knotweed for some of the rhubarb.


Baby Malabar Spinach, that was a winner last year, and will grow as the weather warms up more and more.


Some of my tomato starts are sturdier than others this year. Still got room for improvement there!


Garlic is going strong, and the lettuce will grow to surround it.


One of the two baby cherry trees flowered a bit but I doubt will set fruit, having no buddy for pollination :-(


Gooseberries grew a ton, and have more berries than last year, but the real winner are ....


.... the red currants. Going totally gangbuster with all the fruit set, only waiting to swell and redden.


Snap peas on a netting trellis, just about to take off. Other crops in the back include dragon tongue beans, scarlett runner beans, kale, broccoli (purple early), kohlrabi, swiss chards.


We planted a new row of asparagus in last year's 'new garden' this past weekend, and reinforced the fence. We had a lot of small bunny babies sneak through the 2x4 gauge and eat the bottoms out of the pole beans ... grr....


A blueberry bush under attack from the sky ... see that 'green stick'? That's an inchworm, and we're in the two weeks of 'inchworm buffet season' that grace us every year around here...


Some gratuitous perennial flower shots


My tomato tunnel between the two new beds in the front this year. Hopefully I will get my rather sad looking "Matt's Wild" seedlings to take off. The "sungold" I got as a present from a friend is doing best and sending out the first flower buds. Do you like my recycled maple buckets that I found at the dump? I am using them as flower buckets this year, three in the front, 5 in the main garden, after the handy husband drilled a few drainage holes in the bottoms.


I'll close with a picture from yesterday's nature walk: I hope you'll spend at least some of your day lazing in the sun with a fat belly full of delicious food, like this reptile: 



Tuesday Garden Party 03.18.14

8 comments:

  1. Your garden looks amazing! I hope mine looks like yours soon. Loving all the pictures. :)

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    1. Thank you, and thank you for your visit! My tip is to do one project every year. I've been at this for 10 years now, in this yard. I should put a timeline together one day, to show what our starting point was...

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  2. Ooh currants! And nothing's wrong with some gratuitous perennial flower shots!

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    1. I know! I can't wait for currant cake (German recipe, of course). Flowers do make spring so lovely, don't they?

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  3. Wow! Your gardens look amazing! We just put in raised beds this year and I am feeling very much like a novice gardener again. This square foot thing is wonderful but I'm finding it's all taking longer since it's the first time we've done square foot gardening too and I need to constantly consult the book we have! I'm still not sure I have the tomatoes in the right spacing!

    We too planted "Matt's Wild" and "Sungold" (along witha few other heirloom varieties) though not from seeds but from seedlings we got at Russell's. Looking forward to seeing how they do!

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    1. Oh, and here's the link to our planting pictures:
      http://ouronesweetfamily.blogspot.com/2014/05/our-day.html

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    2. You got Matt's Wild seedlings at Russels? In Wayland? I am peeved. I asked there and they just gave me a blank stare. I should go back and ask again, maybe they'll have some left?

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    3. On and we do a hybrid of square foot and regular gardening. I didn't follow the 'mix' of soils he uses, I just do the raised beds because I didn't want to dig and turn the sod :-) I used what some call a 'Lasagna method'. Experimenting what works for your spot and your soil and your work habits is what it's all about, isn't it?

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