June 7, 2009: The Garden in June

They say the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Well, the same thing applies to veggie gardens, so I stepped over to the neighbor's yard to take a photo of my back yard. I think my garden is prettier from her side of the fence because you can see the entire garden at once. I wish I had the nerve to get up on my roof to photograph it, like Liisa does with hers!


The view from Pat's yard.



Back on my side of the fence.



These carrots are maturing faster than the ones I planted earlier. I wish the nasturtium blossoms were more visible, but as usual they have more leaf than blossom.



The potato patch is still looking great.


The potatoes are blossoming now.


I'm going to have to stake Daphne's dill, it's getting so tall.



Dan's melons are beginning to tumble out of their barrel.



The peas are blooming now, seemingly unaffected by our recent heat wave.



The Purple Beauty peppers never did get large enough to put out into the garden, so they are potted by the patio with the impatiens. I doubt they will give me much, if anything.



My favorite rose in all her glory, with thyme at her feet.



The squash patch. No blossoms here yet, and something is eating my sunflowers. The Blue Wave petunia in the tipsy pot has had all the blossoms chewed up.



Bird netting is keeping the strawberries safe. I had a bowlful for breakfast this morning, topped with vanilla yogurt, and they are really delicious!



The wind blew my sugar snap peas over, but it didn't hurt the crop. I've had one good picking, and it's time for another.



I had to turn the tomato buckets around yesterday. I had the fill tubes in the back, thinking I wouldn't have to access them with the drip tubing in place. However, the largest plant takes more water than the others, so I was getting a lot of overflow before the big one was filled. Now I can reach Mr. Biggie with the hose to keep him satisfied. The marigolds are almost ready to bloom in this bed.



Look at my babies! I found five little ones on this Volvograd tomato plant. This is one of the plants I thought I was going to lose.



The basil has finally begun to grow. I've snipped a couple of sprigs so far, and used them in lasagna.



Look's like we'll be eating broccoli from EG soon!



The first cabbage is almost ready for cole slaw! I didn't think my brassicas had a chance of maturing, but they fooled me. I still don't think I'll get any cauliflower, but all the broccoli and cabbage that survived cutworms are doing well.




The garden shed is coming along, albeit much slower now that John can only spend evenings and weekends on it. He got a lot done yesterday, so I can begin painting once I've finished priming the bare wood, filling nail holes, etc. He's working on the doors today. If you think the windows look a bit off, there is a big (gets very tall) rose bush to the left of the long, narrow window, so we had to place the window accordingly. The other window is a bit low, as I had John put it in according to my height, not that of a 6' man. It's perfect for me to rest my elbows on while gazing at the garden.


34 comments:

  1. Granny, it's amazing. I can't believe you can grow toms and peppers at the same time as your peas and lettuce. There's no chance of doing that here!

    Things look great.

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  2. Everything looks so nice. I'm glad your poor tomato recovered. I hate whenever I lose a plant. Our weather has been cloudy, dry and cool so things aren't growing as quickly as I would want them to, but do they ever? I think my garden is a couple of weeks behind yours.

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  3. Woooow, your garden is amazing. Mine looks so bare compared to yours. I am especially jealous of your tomatoes, I have to start mine much earlier next year :) Can't wait to see your melons start forming! :D

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  4. Ribbit, it's touch and go on the lettuce and peas right now. We had an early hot spell that I thought was going to end their production. The spinach bolted to seed in the past two days, so I can't brag about it any more ;-)

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  5. Daphne, I your peppers are way ahead of mine. I think our garden season is pretty close, but the hot spell we recently had gave mine a bit more of a growth spurt.

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  6. I can't believe your potatoes are flowering already....Dangit, mine aren't doing crap! Your garden looks beautiful! (as usual)The shed is coming along nicely! BTW.....this "Pat" that lives next door....it wouldn't be the same one from "Saturday Night Live" would it? Ha!!!!

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  7. Cynthia, I'm going to start my tomatoes later next year! It was a problem keeping them all healthy until it was warm enough to plant them.

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  8. Granny, your garden looks sooo good!

    The bird house on top of the wooden ladder is so cute!

    I can't believe how fast your shed is being completed! Way to go John!!! It's looking really great!

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  9. Granny, your garden looks sooo good!

    The bird house on top of the wooden ladder is so cute!

    I can't believe how fast your shed is being completed! Way to go John!!! It's looking really great!

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  10. EG, I had to put some wire fencing around my potatoes to hold them up, they are so lush they just want to flop over.

    No, my Pat-next-door is a sweetheart. Guess what she bought me yesterday....another tomato plant! LOL, I guess she didn't think I had enough of them with only 26, LOL! She paid over $3 for a tiny Juliet grape, that is wimpier than any of mine ever were (except that Green Grape). It is a Bonnie plant in a 4" pot, but looks like it has been way over watered. I gave her a bunch of sweet onions from my garden, and I planted some green beans, zucchini and cucumbers on her side of the fence.

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  11. After seeing your melon plants this afternoon I rushed out and planted the ones I have growing in peat pots into the soil. They have lots of catching up to do, yours look great! The shed looks very nice too, the window placement looks good too.

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  12. The garden is really progressing Granny. Your basil looks in good shape. Mine wanted to languish this spring, but has finally started growing more bushy. I did not grow any last year and really missed it.

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  13. Dan, good thing you got those melons planted!

    I thought the long window looked out of place, and I tried to talk John into moving it over a notch. He's stubborn like his Mom....insisted this was the best place for it because of the rose bush.

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  14. KitsapFG, I got that basil out way too early, and it suffered for a long time before deciding to grow! I have several plants throughout the garden, so I need to be diligent about pinching them to make them bushier.

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  15. I think the window looks fine, like a side light on a front door. I need a window in my shed and hydro too, I think it might be item number 167 on my to do list :-)

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  16. Dan, he had a skylight for the shed but forgot to install it, now I won't let him cut into the roof. I think I would rather use it as the cover for a cold frame. He also has a large exhaust fan he planned to install in the north gable, to blow the hot air out in the summer. I'm not sure how he plans on fitting the fan in if I'm going to have a ceiling and insulation. Maybe it's going to be installed in the north wall instead. ???

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  17. Hey Granny! Your garden looks amazing. So many things you are ahead of me on (pumpkins, cucumbers) and things I am ahead of you on! (potatoes have already bloomed and the plants are dying. I cant WAIT to get my hands on those potatoes!)

    I was wondering about your ladder. I have an old one that I was wanting to do like you did, put it in my garden for the cantelope to grow on, but it has some chipped paint. I see yours is painted. I am assuming that the paint wont hurt them? The bottom of the ladder is all wood. No paint (worn off). Do you think I can still use it? I LOVE yours!

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  18. Beautiful garden.
    The dill you have is the kind of dill I have been trying to find. Some was sent to me from a seed company years ago, and now I can not find any here. Butterflies like that dill for there babies. What kind of Dill is it?

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  19. I'm late to the party, but it all looks great!

    My basil hasn't got a thing on yours -- I think it's pouting in the cool weather. And I wanted LOTS of it -- rats!

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  20. Everything is looking fantastic. I never would have thought anything was unusual about the long window. It just looks like you're mixing it up a little with the design.

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  21. JenCoss, my ladder isn't painted, just old weathered wood. I wouldn't hesitate to use a painted ladder though, unless it was really old flaking paint that might contain lead. In fact, I was going to paint my ladder bright blue, but changed my mind when I put the old whiskey barrels in the garden...decided old weathered wood was fine. I'm hoping I can train that yellow crookneck up the ladder a bit.

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  22. Caseysmom, I've been meaning to visit your blog, and keep getting sidetracked with all the gardening, building and blogging. I hope things are going better for you. Remind me, and I'll send you some seeds from the dill. I don't have a name, it is some Daphne (Daphne's Dandelions) sent from her plants....I think just common dill.

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  23. Stefaneener, much of mine has taken off and is growing well, but some is being eaten to the ground by I don't know what. Good thing I planted quite a bit!

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  24. Cheryl, I chopped the rose bush to the ground so we could get in there to build. I'm sure the window will look better when the bush grows back up (and it's growing fast now). It was a miniature rose that I got for Mother's Day one year, but when I planted it, it grew to be about 8' tall and probably 5-6' across! It's a nasty sucker, but it hides that entire section of the neighbor's ugly fence ;-)

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  25. Your garden looks great! Mine might catch up, eventually...

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  26. Thanks, Amy. I'm sure you will catch up soon. It won't be long before we get 100+ temps to burn up my plants :-(

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  27. Granny,

    What potato variety is that. Beautiful flowers. Mine are white (blah).

    Everything looks so lush, you'd never know you spend your winters out of state!

    Your SWC self waterer issue is something I never thought of, one plant maturing faster and taking more water than the others, thus wasting it. Very interesting. Glad you caught it and are manually watering. Maybe EG can figure a solution to this one too (in his spare time, hehe).

    Your broccoli is about the only thing in your garden behind mine. That's because I started mine from seed while you were in Arizona.

    The shed is really coming along, tell John he's doing a bang-up job! My house is just over the Cascades... hehe.

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  28. All your veggies just look so clean and disease free! Not a slug hole in sight - I envy that!

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  29. Sinfonian, I don't remember what variety they are! There were about 10 bins of different varieties at the feed store, and I knew I wanted Yukon Gold and an early red variety. So I chose the red ones I wanted, but didn't write the variety down on the sack. I'm thinking Red Pontiac or Red Norland. Red Pontiac flowers are described as pink, while the Norlands are described as dark red/purple. So I'd guess Red Pontiacs.

    I think a solution to the SWC problem would be to add an emitter to the tubing in the two smaller plants to slow the flow, thereby allowing me to leave the water running longer for filling the containers of the large plants. But I'll probably just continue to supplement the big guys, as the others should catch up soon and watering should even out.

    The shed building seems to go in spurts. Sometimes I wonder if I'll get to use it at all this season! It's still full of building supplies, and my garden equipment is still on the patio and in the garage :-(

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  30. Matron, you didn't see the leaf miner damage on the beets? And I have some green beans, lettuce, sunflowers, basil, marigolds and petunias that are being chewed to pieces by something unknown. The insect damage is rampant in my garden this year, more than any year I can remember!

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  31. Wow - that shed is looking amazing! He's done such a nice job on it. Also love that your brassicas did so well despite the cutworms. BTW I used Sluggo and it took care of the earwig problem with my carrots - thanks for the tip on that one! I think I need bird netting to keep my preschooler out of the strawberries. I don't think I've had ONE all year!

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  32. Thanks, Jeen. I'll sure be happy when it's finished! I can't get anything in there, it's full of tools and lumber.

    I'll have to remember Sluggo. I resorted to using Sevin on the petunia and the sunflower, but they are still being chewed to bits. I refuse to put it on my veggies.

    I need to make some kind of frame for my bird netting. It keeps getting blown away, or I get my feet all tangled in it. A hoop house frame and some clamps would be nice.

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