Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Gardening in the summer

well here we are, the start of the summer, and i am already learning some things i want to do differently next year in the garden. AND i am remembering how fast this yard can get out of hand, especially with as much rain and heat as we have been having so far. however i will say i think we are doing better staying more on top of it this year than in years past. but let me share some of my thoughts. more for myself to remember and to hopefully one day help my kids. first let me state that once again, i have failed to fix the date on the camera (stupid camera) and no i did not take these pictures 10 years ago! lol

my strawberry patch. we had wonderful strawberries, but i quickly realized the patch was a bit wide and i need to revise how the future strawberries are planted. i need to put them in actual rows so we can reach them more easily and i need to mulch with straw so the don't get yucky from laying on the ground. i didn't realize (duH) with their weight they would end up on the ground. due to that, this season is over due to the moldy and yucky ones on the ground. but we did harvest quite a bit before hand.


The "orchard" we have started in the back. there are several fruit and nut trees back there with little wire fences around them. but for now i just want this picture for future reference on how it used to look before they matured!









a little closer view of the orchard trees amonst the established ones. i love my big trees. they are the most wonderful shade tree, but i will soon have to raise their canopies to allow sun to my plants!






my little peach tree. we planted it last year and we were not supposed to get fruit on it for a couple years. however these peaches did not read those rules as they are already growing.















The back of the main garden













Side of main garden. i believe i planted like 22 tomato plants. i have a few different types i wanted to try, plus my main ones.








my bush beans. much easier so far than the pole beans, we will see what kind of yields i get though. however it disturbs me greatly when it comes time to thin them to pull out completely healthy plants and just throw them out! but they did come up really well, which is more than i can say for my corn!







The corn, ohhhh my arch enemy this year! alot of the corn planted did not come up, however, i had a few rows that did well, so when i thinned those out i decided to try and transplant them in the spots the other corn did not come up. in fact one whole row is transplants. i will know later if i should have just used new seed or if the transplants were a good idea.




Ohhhhh my peas and sugar snap peas!!!! this is not the greatest year for those. this year i decided to use a trellis for them to grow up instead of string. well maybe my trellis was too thick, i'm not sure, but the plants would NOT grow up them, they kept laying on the ground no matter how hard we tried to train them up, and then i couldn't weed in between the rows, and you see it is part peas part grass in there! however we have been able to harvest a fairly good batch so far.










cucumber. well i am still not completely sure on how far apart i should have planted them, so we will see if these were too close or if i should have thinned these out as well. like the beans they came up really good. we got the fencing up a few days later than i wanted, because in those few days they grew quite a bit and it was harder to get them going up the fence. we will see how well this idea goes. last year i used string for these as well.




my melon patch. chris dug this out for me to have a seperate area for them as the vines tend to take over. my goal is to keep all vines inside this area! my melon seeds i started indoors did not survive so i got 2 watermelon and 1 canteloupe plants at the farmers market. we'll see how they do.






my potato patch! i am soo excited about that! i have red potatos, blue potatoes and white potatoes all growing. however when frankie and his friend blake helped me plant them, some how they ended up in not so straight of rows and some were coming up in the middle of rows which makes weeding harder. but i have to get in there and get it done. i just have not done it yet but when i do, you can be sure i will be mulching so don't have to do it again!



my berry row. this is where my blackberry and raspberry plants are. we transplanted them 2 years ago in the fall. we just dug them up from around the yard and put them in one place. last year they started growing and this year they have produced berries. though not too terribly big on size, they are huge on flavor. need to learn more about growing them so hopefully we can get a better turn out on the raspberries next year. the blackberries are still flowering and green but we've picked some of the raspberries so far.















the grapes! the white grapes have taken off this year! they have already reached the top of the arbor and they even have grapes growing on them! we planted all these plants last year, but we think these get more sun than the others which is why they have done so well. next to them are 2 concord grap plants that aren't doing bad. then on the other side are two red grape plants, which accidently got mowed over last year so they are not quite too big yet.



well that is all for now. i have my middle of the season look to remember next year when planning what to do the same and what not to do and maybe even some new ideas.

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