A tour of the veggie garden

It's nearing the end of June and our veggie garden is coming along nicely.  The weather this year is far better than last year, which was incredibly hot and dry; now we are extremely damp so I'm not having to water near as much.  Most of the crop was started from seed except the cherry tomato plant and half the cucumber vines, which were store-bought in small pots.

I didn't get everything in the ground as fast as I would have liked, some things (like the pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes and watermelons) stayed in the seed starter pots longer than they should so they're just getting started in-ground.  I still have some empty spaces left over, maybe I'll add some lettuce and onions and more broccoli.

The corn is doing VERY well this year. Last season we didn't even get a full ear, it was way too hot/dry for a decent crop. The sweet corn is in-ground, the Indian corn is super-thriving in a 5-gallon bucket on the patio.

Tiny cherry tomatoes of the Sweet 100 variety.

Baby 'burpless' cucumber, about the length of your little finger.

Larger 'burpless' cucumber coming along nicely.
Thanks for checking in! 

Fauna Friday

Since gardening season is ramping up, today's Fauna Friday features a couple little caterpillars from last year's garden.
Here we have the Saddleback Caterpillar, which I found lurking on my Toad Lily plant.  It's a beauty, but apparently the poisonous sting is quite painful.

Next, introducing the Cabbage Looper.  This little bastard and his buddies nibbled their way through my Roma tomatoes.

Look at what they did to the Romas!  And that's just a few of the tomatoes they ruined.
*kicks tiny green asses*

Growing Strong

My indoor seed sprouts are in full swing upstairs, many are very close to requiring transplanting.
A few times throughout out the day, I have to go make wind in the seed room.  hehehehehhehe yeah, I'm still 12.  Seriously, though, I do wave a sheet of cardboard gently over the sprouts a few times a day to simulate wind so the stems will toughen to it and they won't be shocked so by real wind when they move outdoors.

I should organize another round of seed starting, also, but I'm short on time and space.  Yesterday I expanded the boundaries of the veggie garden, so I'm almost ready to get these babies in the ground.  Just need to add the soil amendments and still finalizing exactly where I'm going to plant what....... so exciting!  And so much work, but so worth it.  Nothing like fresh food grown by your own efforts!

Diggin' in the Dirt

This afternoon, I added a bag of claybreaker and 3 bags of organic topsoil to half the vegetable patch.

What a job it is busting up that packed clay with shovel, pitchfork or hoe!  But I am very pleased with the results and am looking forward to digging out grass and expanding the other half a few feet before I add the soil amendments to that section.  I'm expanding only the left side outwards due to drainage issues - to the right, water piles up a bit when we get a hard storm; and also to take advantage of longer afternoon sunlight exposure occurring in that direction.

Beginning of Gardening Season

Here in Tennessee, the weather is sporadically attempting to warm up and everyone is starting to work in their yards again - mowing grass, clearing out dead brush from the winter, getting new bulbs and trees in the ground.  The garden centers are filling up with flowers and fruit trees and young veggie plants.

I have begun to work myself.  Today I mowed and edged 1/4 of the front yard that grows faster and also trimmed some bushes.  Then I temporarily placed a line of stepping stones right down the middle of rectangular veggie garden, I'm dividing it into 2 sections and this will make it much easier to tend things without getting muddy.  Hopefully.

Over the past couple weeks I've been working on starting my seeds indoors.  These pics were taken on March 25, mostly everything has grown since then, I'll update again soon.

  This is my high-tech indoor seeding zone - a spare bedroom with little furniture (good floor space) and decent light from a south-west facing window.
Sadly, this is the most action the toboggan has seen in a couple years.  Oh well.

Here we have cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, pumpkins, squash, zucchini, sunflowers, marigolds, zinnias, morning glories and surely other things I'm forgetting.

 

Yellow squash.
You can see the first tiny "true leaf" in the center of the  cotyledons.  When two of them have emerged and grown to a healthy size, it'll be ready for transplanting.





 

Pumpkins and sunflowers.




As the sprouts grow bigger, I'll transplant them from these cells to larger containers, which will then move to the garage which has windows and gets pretty decent light.  Then I'll shift the young plants to the front porch during the days, back to the garage at night and then finally let them stay out overnight night to complete the hardening off process. 

In 2011 I had great luck with corn in 5 gallon buckets.
In 2012..... not so much.  It was incredibly hot and dry last year and neither my 5-gallon-bucket corn nor my ground-planted corn had any edible success.  There were a couple puny little ears but that was it.



This year I'm planning to add more soil amendments to the vegetable patch (claybreaker and organic garden soil) because our yard is really heavy red clay and I think it will help with rooting and drainage.



Tune in later for more!

Bulbapalooza

Prepare to seethe with jealousy (if you're into seething).
I hit the bulb jackpot!
A couple weeks ago, I stumbled across these bulbs on sale for $2.00 a bag at MalWart, which was a good deal as they were originally $3.98/$4.98 each. They're clearing out the last of the fall-planting bulbs and I snagged these 3 bags for me and a couple other bags that I gave to my mom.

A few days ago, I went to a different MalWart & they had many of the same/similar bulbs that weren't labelled on sale, but I grabbed a bunch & took them to the price-scanner machine and they were.......
*drumroll*..... *wait for it*.....

$0.02 each.
!!!

I bought 136 bulbs for twenty-four cents. Wooohoooo!

Now I have to get them in the ground ASAP because some of them are already sprouting - big time.
Namely the dutch iris mix (which is supposed to be late-blooming!):

The red hyacinth is also peeking through:

Warmish temps right now feel very Spring-like, maybe even hitting 70 on Saturday!  But the weatherpeeps are saying we'll be cooler again next week......

How does the garden grow?

The garden is growing very well now that the weather has cooled off a bit and it rains sometimes.







The bucket sweet corn is getting big and has a lot of ears.










I can't help but think this tuft of corn silk looks like Wembley Fraggle is hiding in the stalk.
































The watermelon is slowly expanding and the vine has made two more attempts at melons - one appears to be shriveling and the other looks to be growing. I'll start monitoring that one more closely.













Beautiful watermelon flower.




A female pumpkin flower starting to form. I'll have to watch and when it opens I'll need to polinate it with one of the male flowers. This is only the second one I've seen on the vine and I didn't try to polinate the other one and it shriveled up.

Garden Update

I'm busy busy busy, so here's just a quick update on what's happening around the garden:
The new hydrangea is adjusting nicely, no longer drooping over terribly in the heat of the afternoon. Its blooms are so big and beautiful considering how small the shrub is yet. I think it is beginning to shift from blue to purple.















Ahhhh, the sunflowers.... so bright and cheerful :-)
There's about 8 of them and 3 have begun to bloom. They are getting about 4-5 feet tall now.










A nice, juicy cucumber in the front flowerbed. They sure are spiky when they're little! A few more tiny ones are under the leaves, but it looks like all the vine's energy is going into this particular cuke.

I've got corn sprouting in a couple 5-gallon buckets, and some watermelon vines and red peppers plants in the works, more pics later. Happy gardening!

My trellis

I finished building the bamboo trellis for the front garden a couple weeks ago and now the passion flower vines are growing on it nicely.


















It's constructed of 33 pieces of bamboo and measures 100 inches wide by 72 inches tall. I built it inside due to the heat and then moved it out for installation..... that was quite a job shifting it by myself! Only possible because it's not heavy. I drove 3 metal plant stakes deep into the ground and tied the trellis to them so hopefully it'll withstand any wind gusts. I anchored the west side a bit closer to the house to minimize the chance of wind catching it from that direction and flopping it over.











Where the flowers die a fruit begins to form. Last I looked, there were 4 fruits on the vines.
I've also spotted several variegated fritillary caterpillars roaming about, they appear to be big fans of the passion vines. Spiky little thing's eating the end off this leaf.

Adventures in Landscaping

So, we've lived in our new house for a year & a half, and I've gotten around to doing a little landscaping. A couple flower beds out front just need something, they're pretty basic with some shrubs and azaleas.... I want more variety.
I've added a few kinds of hosta, phlox, mondo grass, creeping jenny (ha!), as well as some elephant ear and mixed caladium bulbs, which haven't sprouted yet.
Now, prepare yourself to be impressed. Here's the before/after photos. Ok the photos aren't spectacular but I managed to figure how to do mouseover script again after several years (and on blogger no less) so I should get at least 1 point for that.
And possibly a cookie.

Let's Get Ready to Garden!

This has been the coldest, snowiest winter since we've lived in Tennessee. I'm enjoying the heck out of it, yet I find myself yearning for the brightness of Spring. And of course, once Spring is here I'll be missing the snow :-) Gah!!
So to tide myself over, I created this garden-y Etsy Treasury full of things that are sure to make you ready to dig in the soil. Enjoy!

Tiny discovery

I was checking out my pole bean vines growing in the kitchen today, counting up the pods. There's 5 skinny ones as long as my little finger, a few flowers.... and then I saw this itty bitty pod lying on the floor. It is 1/2 inch long (1.27 cm). Not sure why it fell off the vine, perhaps it was 'rejected'. But on the bright side, it offered me great photo ops.


After a couple hours off the vine it was starting to get limp and bruise easily, might as well slice it open with the exacto knife and get a look at the inside.....
seven tiny beans the size of sand grains!
ohhhhh, sweet :-)