Catch up

Its been entirely too hot to do anything lately :( For almost a week straight my little thermometer read in the 100's. Any thought of going out during the evening was quickly retreated from as the storm clouds would roll in. All in all not much has happened lately. We did have a rather nasty storm that walloped my tomatoes the other day. I had to go out and restake some of them. As far as harvest go I did get to start picking my peas. I've gotten quite a few so far. I thought for sure the hot weather was going to kill them straight away but thankfully it did not. They look a little worse for the wear but are now flowering again. My lettuce patch went to flower- Sorry Mom! I have a little bit of bibb left that I'm using as cut and come again. Maybe i will try to get some heat resistant kinds in this week. I miss my arugala too badly to not try to plant more. While meandering through Sherbondy's this week I stumbled upon clearance vegetables. Too bad Jer wasn't there to put in some reason. I ended up with more cucumbers, tomatoes, and watermelon.( Oh MY!) I'm not sure if its too late for all of those but at least I will get to see. I planted those today seeing as the weather was only in the 80's. I was looking at my johnny's seed catalogue when I noticed something peculiar. My fairy tale eggplant is a mini! Here I've been waiting for them to get bigger (they are about 5 inches long and 2 inches wide) OOPS! I have a little square of unused space towards the back of my garden right now and I'd like to try beets. I do this with great hesitation because of an incident at a salad bar once. Everyone swears that fresh grown beets taste nothing like the salad bar stuff though. So here I am in the seed packet aisle again. I should be banded. I ended up with Hybrid Red Ace as my choice. Lets hope they stand up. For my harvest today its 2 green peppers, 1 banana pepper, more peas,2 eggplants, and some carrot thinnings for my sidekicks. oh I also picked some lemon balm,pineapple sage, and some apple mint.

Flea Beetles and a Mister

I've come across the problem of flea beetles. They have taken a liking to my eggplants. I've tried picking them off a couple times a day and smashing them. ( which is quite fun I might add) This method did not work however.Everyday I would come out and find more. I did not want to just spray everything with pesticide as the lady at the garden center seemed so fond of doing. I've got a lot of lady bugs in my garden, I did not want them gone as well! So I went perusing the pest control aisle and found neem oil. I mixed it up like it said to on the bottle and just sprayed the affected plants, thus saving my ladybugs. I went out today and did not find a single flea beetle. Tiffany 1, Flea Beetles 110

Jer got me a surprise the other day. He thought I could use a mister for outside. The temperatures have turned more summerlike here lately and I got to use it today. It made being outside so much nicer. It also made me a little more motivated to clear all the weeds that have that have sprouted well like weeds from all the rain we've had.

Bunnies

I'd like you to meet my garden helpers, Sophie and Obama. Sophie is in the basket and Obama is in the grass. They love to come out to the garden and munch on the grass and dandelions. Their outdoor pin is right next to the garden, so I can watch them while I work. They both love it when I sneak them thinnings and such. When they are not in the garden helping, Sophie likes to plays fetch while Obama is content to sit on laps and watch tv.

Rain Rain Go Away

I'm getting antsy with all of this rain. I think its rained nearly everyday for the past 2 weeks. I was really hoping to do some garden work today. Oh Well

Today's Pickings: Bell Pepper, Red Onions, Radish,lots of lettuce (bibb,arugala,spinach,head of romaine)

Kentucky Wonders

I put up the poles for my kentucky wonder beans today. They came up over the weekend and I decided I should probably get a move on with the poles. I also have Tenderpick bush beans coming up. Hopefully they will be decent producers.

Todays Pickings: Cherry Bell Radishes

Pea Blossoms

After quite a while of hoping and waiting, I have blossoms on my pea plants. I was worried maybe I planted too late. I kept putting off planting my peas because I got so many different opinions on when the perfect time to plants peas was. The weather was not very helpful either. We ended up having a warm and dry Spring followed by a cool and wet start to Summer.I finally decided to just put them in and if they didnt grow well, I would know better next year. I'm glad I decided to give them a try.

New Additions

Ive been trying to find some interesting herbs for my garden. I thought I was out of luck until I stopped by Bomgard's yesterday. They had just about everything I wanted and it was all 50% off. ( Still looking for chamomile and dill) Now I have to make more room for everything. Here's a list of all of my herbs:

Lemon Balm

Cilantro

Apple Mint

Chocolate Mint

Lemon Mint

Rosemary

English Thyme

Oregano

Garlic Chives

Chives

Lavender

Pinapple Sage

Basil

Heres some tomatoes that have started to grow. There was only 1 on Thursday but now theres a ton. I have quite a few on each plant of Early Girl, Better Boy, and Lemon boy. No tomatoes yet on German Green. It takes 25-30 days for them to ripen so I think I might have tomatoes by the 4th of July!

Garden Beginnings

Its been a lot of hard work getting started on this garden, so I thought I'd throw in some before and after pictures. I started out with a little spot behind the garage. I took out the sod and hand tilled the soil. While doing so I found some very interesting items left by the previous occupants of this house. I think the best of which was a barbie doll leg. Now my garden has started to grow quite nicely. It actually looks like a real garden. Who would of known?