Garden Update

Well, it's been awhile since I've updated about the vegetable garden. I went out last evening and took a few pictures (it was dusk-ish, please forgive the photo quality!) and pulled a couple of weeds. Even though I'm working this week, I made a mental list of things to do in the afternoons when I get home: cucumber trellis, add more mylar tapes to the plants, add some tomato composting to the tomato bed (according to my favorite source, it's a great way to replenish the nitrogen tomatoes suck out of the soil!) and some more weeding. Always with the weeding. Embrace the weeding. (In this picture, the pumpkins are in the foreground, and a 'volunteer' squash is behind it. I saw it growing from a tiny budding seedling several weeks ago. I almost pulled it, because in a raised bed, you sort of know what you put, where, and when, so any outsider could legitimately be a pest. I sort of recognized the broad, flat leaves, though, and let it go. Yep, it's some kind of squash! I would not have planted it so close to the pumpkin, nor so close to the edge of the bed, but he has a will so on he goes. He's nearly overtaken the marjoram in the far corner too!)

This picture is taken from the mid-point of the bed, looking back. That's eggplant and cucumber, and a yellow squash or two. I don't see much mylar here. Do I see any? I think no. Maybe a couple, way in the back bed on the tomatoes? At the very far right hand side of this bed, you can see a tomato plant that is officially a couple of feet high. It's definitely growing!




Here is the main garden bed at the front. More eggplant, more cucumber, a yellow squash (which may or may not be suffering from a fungus on his leaves?) and a volunteer tomato. I have no idea where it came from, but it grew from a seed, it's about a foot tall, and you can kind of see the yellow flowers it's starting to get just behind the eggplant leaf there. Again, why so close to the other plants? Why so close to the edge? le sigh.


My camera battery died before I could take a picture of the smaller tomato bed in the back, so I'll have to update that later. I've been um...complaining around here quite a bit (what?) about the cold summer we're experiencing. I got a late start on the veggie garden (first week of June, as opposed to the last week of April that I normally would do) and June was cold and gray. I've had problems with birds and deer, and so I put the mylar strips on just a couple of weeks ago, and added the terracotta pots on the garden stakes. (I think those are supposed to be kind of like scarecrows? Maybe to animals they look like people standing around in the garden?) July had a couple of hot weeks, and most afternoons have been sunny, but the mornings and nights are cold and windy. We eat outside on the patio, in sweatshirts, and move shivering into the house by the the time the sun goes below the mountains. It was drizzling this morning. Did I mention the complaining?










So, the point is, I was legitimately wondering if my veggie garden was doomed. Could I keep it afloat by nurturing it along until our typical "Indian Summer" kicks in at the end of August? Or has the damage been done? Are the plants too stunted from the weather and the pests to ever produce?

I went back and looked up the picture I took the first week of June, right when I had planted the garden in the first place. My veggie beds may not look like much in my updated photos, but when I compare it to what it looked like here, when it started, I feel very optimistic indeed!