Mint, lemon balm, and rosemary

Early June 2015

So the garden is in full force. I'm struggling to keep up with the lettuce picking! I've picked 17 bags of lettuce, and picked 13 full heads of lettuce before they bolted. The mint and lemon balm are thriving, since I've been cutting them back in order to supply friends at work with herbs for their water!


Potatoes

 The potatoes are going nuts, and already flowering.

The squash and beans are burgeoning!



Artichokes, Hubbard squash, and an eggplant

The lettuce bed, some already harvested



Tomatoes, acorn squash, chard, garlic, shallots

Onions of various kinds; kale, kalette, broccolis, kohlrabi

The bush beans are flowering, and I already have (at last count) 9 squash set on the squash plants. I'm a little concerned for the cucumbers, since they seem to be getting a bit overwhelmed by the squash; but perhaps that will suit them well, so that they don't dry out as quickly as they did last year (fingers crossed, the bitter cucumbers were horrible!) Tomatoes are already blooming, and cherry tomatoes are already setting. The pole beans are diligently climbing the trellis, as well as anything they can reach. I had to pull one off of one of the tomatoes the other day and encourage it in another direction! I have three or four peppers already set on the plants as well. I've had to cut back most of the chard because of leaf miners; hopefully the current heat will discourage any more of them. I've had a battle with the aphids on the brassicas as always, but have discovered that early, intense, and repeated applicaations of neem oil (totally organic) does the trick. I had to pull one plant, though, that was tiny, weak, and totally infested. But since I have ample kale plants, I figured sacrificing one wasn't going to be a big issue. Now I just have to keep on top of the infestation!

The hardneck garlic is starting to send up scapes, right on time (maybe a week earlier than last year, though!) So this means I have about a month until harvest time, I think. It's thriving this year, and seems to love my garden. I'm trying shallots for the first time, and they seem to be doing well. The onions have finally recovered from whatever trauma they have endured, although the crop won't be as good as last year, due to the damping off that happened with the seedlings. Maybe I'll try growing some over the winter this year.

So that sums up the progress on the garden this season! I've already had a 61% return on investment so far this season . . . as long as I don't count time as part of the investment!

Spring Garden 2015

Hard for me to realize that it's been nearly a year since I posted last about my garden. It's been a busy year, with a fair sized crop coming in (about 200% Return on Investment!) and some much needed changes taking place in the garden itself.

The Chip Pile - halfway done.

First off, I got tired of battling the weeds and the slugs and snails that hid within them, so I decided it was time to do something about the chaos in between the garden beds. I went online and was first going to order wood chips from a local company; then I stumbled on a very useful website, Chip Drop, which connects arborists and gardeners. Chip Drop will deliver wood chips to your specified location for free. Now, if you choose the free option, you may have to wait a while to get your load of chips. They also offer you the option of donating an amount to cover the cost of the delivery. The recommended amounts start at $20. I offered to pay $20, fully expecting that I would have to wait a few days to see my chips. I was surprised to be contacted by an arborist looking to deliver chips the very next morning! Of course, my husband wasn't too thrilled with it, since that took up a fair amount of the parking behind our house, but I kept reminding him it was essentially FREE (especially when you compare the price of the delivery to what it would have cost me to buy the chip from a regular landscape supply company!)

Now, a couple of caveats: 1) they deliver on their schedule, not yours; and 2) this is not the pristine, well-cleaned, branch- and log-free chip you might get from a landscape company. This has branches, large and small, and can contain a bit of detritus from the site where they did the tree cutting (so you may find a bit of garbage). That being said, it smells fabulous, and the load was generous enough to cover my entire area  at least 4" deep, plus leave about a 1/4 of a pile to spread out around the rest of my yard.

If you're interested in your own load of chip, here's the website address:

https://www.chipdrop.in/login/

So this is what I've done for the past month:




The halfway point. Three weekends to get to this!

Halfway point, the other direction.

Passing the halfway point and on the home stretch!

Again to the west. Sans artichokes, which harbored the slugs and snails!!

The finished product, looking down from the porch.

The finished product, looking down from the porch.

The herb bed and the end of the garden area!

And here are the plants that will go in the tidied beds!

And here . . .

And here!