Sunday, June 04, 2006

Garden Journal, Week 9


The tomatos are FINALLY starting to set fruit! We started shaking the plants every day around noon to help them pollinate, and it has worked wonders- almost every plant has at least 5 baby tomatos on it.



















Zucchini
































Zinnia





























































Tomato row






























peas






























Tomatillo. I just learned this week that tomatillos are NOT like tomatos in the sense that they do not self pollinate. They need another plant nearby, and bees to do the pollinating. As we have no bees, I might have to use the cotton swab method.






















Heres a romaine plant that came up from last year's seed that was scattered.


























Potatos. I've hilled up almost a foot. I think I can go more...




























The peaches are getting much bigger than last year. This time they are not withering, probably since I picked most of them off, and water a lot more.






















Heres the box with strawberries, zucchini, watermelon, spinach, garlic, and carrots. off to the left are some raspberries, that in the fall I will transplant to a better location.
























This box has tomatos, peppers, peas, cucumber, jerusalem artichoke and crookneck squash.


























The flowers in the front yard's circle are coming along nicely.
























My basil seeds I planted a month ago are finally getting more than their first set of leaves. I moved two plants to the shade to see if they do any better there, since the spot they are in now gets sun the whole day and they never seem to do very well...
























The Gladiolas are multiplying and replenishing the earth.




4 comments:

Nick said...

And we are now eating tons of lettuce. I think I'll plant more this week to coincide with the first tomato harvest.

Anonymous said...

Once again, Nick's garden post has jealousified me. Unfortunately, my sister and I are still working on the terracing of her hill in the backyard. Fortunately, we now have a hired hand, so the work should speed up. On Saturday we rented a sod cutter and cut up all the grass growing on the hill; now we just need to remove it before it reroots (one thing at a time, eh?) After that we'll probably have more of a sense of urgency to finish the terracing since the hill will now be more subject to erosion.

We had already bought seeds for the garden. Will those keep until next year? I'm thinking that this year we'll plant half with some storebought summer flowers and cover the other half in clear plastic sheeting for soil solarization (I learned about that at http://www.gardenguides.com/TipsandTechniques/solarization.htm.)

Anonymous said...

If you finish it up in the next few weeks, there's still plenty of things you can plant, even tomatos (just buy the bigger ones with flowers already on them). Things like corn, peppers, squash, zucchini, carrots, lettuce, spinach, pumpkin, ok, basically everything except onions, garlic, strawberries and now that I think about it, its getting kinda late for lettuce- but you can plant that again (along with peas, spinach, cabbage) in august for a fall crop.

Post some pictures of your terracing job, that sounds really cool.

Erin Teichert Barbuto said...

Oh my! That is one beautiful garden! Someday I want to be like Nick and Jenny and their garden. For now, I guess I can shake a little every day at noon...

How do the Jerusalem artichokes grow there? Those are some good little roots. Do you have any suggestions for a mostly-shady yard? I also have quite a flock of squirrels that think they own the joint. ...And I'm in Wyoming where it's often less than warm, but by doggies, I'd like to start a garden!