It looks pretty bad, huh? I can see the bedroom window again, at least for now. I'm sure more new growth will come from those top branches.
More than three pounds of outer leaves from six Iceberg lettuce plants.
The leaves are huge. As big as my new Woman's Day magazine.
Well, it turned out just fine! Not pink, like it is with white vinegar, but a very pretty light orange. A pint jar of chive blossom vinegar has been started. Tonight we'll be taking our first taste of the pretty vinegar, mixed with oil, on a big dinner salad.
This is a photo from a couple of weeks ago. They're pretty, but almost obliterating a bedroom window. These were here when we bought this house, twenty-two years ago, and they've never been properly pruned.
First I cut back branches that were hanging over the lawn. They kept getting caught in the lawnmower handle.
Look at the mess inside. I had even used ropes to tie up branches that were drooping badly.
I'm getting quite a pile of prunings, and Mr. Granny is having fits.....he thinks I'm going to ruin it, and he might be right!
5/24 - 9 oz. Austrian Red and 6 oz. Red Sails lettuce.
5/24 -3 oz. Walla Walla sweet onion was 28" long.
5/24 - 7 oz. radishes, the end of the spring planting.
5/26 - green garlic and shallots.
Only 6 ounces after cleaning them up, but I needed them for my spaghetti sauce. There are lots more that will be allowed to mature.
5/26 - 3 oz. parsley, 6 oz. Walla Walla sweet onions, 24 oz. spinach, 11 oz. lettuce.
5/27 - 12 oz. baby lettuce. This was cut from the "lettuce nursery", as it was getting too large to transplant. After I cut this, I planted the roots. Hopefully they will continue growing.
5/29 - The first broccoli harvest of the year, 8 oz.
5/29 - 15 oz. lettuce. These heads, from an area unprotected by bird netting, had the outer leaves severely chomped. Cookie, the rabbit, got most of it, but we got the best part, the tender inner leaves.
The north and east gardens at the end of May
Beds 1,2 & 3 are the "short beds". They are only 7' long, due to the lilac tree and flowers on one side. Bed #1 (back) holds the sugar snap peas, which are now at the top of the 3-foot fence. The first picture gives a much better view of these pea plants. No blossoms are showing yet. Bed #2 (center) has cabbage, broccoli and yellow onions. The first broccoli was harvested from this bed today, as it looked as though it was ready to bolt. It never did form a tight head, but had quite a few side sprouts. Bed #3 (foreground) holds the Walla Walla sweet onions, which are now getting nice, fat bulbs.
Bed #4 has the lilac tree, a rose bush that is almost hidden by the hollyhocks, and my "no cut just for pretty" chives.
Bed #5 has some very puny basil plants on the left, four sweet peppers and the earliest planted carrots. At the front edge are parsley and sweet alyssum.
The basil in bed #6 is doing much better. I have more basil planted than I could use in ten years, so I'm not too concerned about the ones that aren't growing well. This bed also has four sweet peppers, a triple row of bush beans that are way too close together. These are some that were reseeded when most of them failed to survive the cold, wet spring. I planted the seeds close to compensate, now I'll have to thin them. Parsley, alyssum and marigolds are in the front of the bed.
Carrots are just beginning to emerge in bed #7, and so far look to be rather spotty in their growth. I'll give them a week before I decide whether to reseed. Those are green onions on the left, leftovers from a couple of bunches from the grocery store. The three Rutgers tomato plants are growing well and looking healthy, although it's difficult to see them with all the lettuce that is growing between them. The beans that survived are growing fine, and I think I reseeded the bare spots. Parsley, alyssum and marigolds are in the front of the bed.
The netting isn't working so well in bed #8. It has definitely slowed the leaf miners down, but they are still getting into the beets. Most of the miner damage is toward the center of the bed, which surprises me. I would think it might be easier for the flies to reach the plants along the edges. At least we had a few good harvests of spinach from this bed, whereas the unprotected spinach plantings were ruined by miners long ago. Some of the spinach in this bed is beginning to go to seed, but there is still quite a bit left to harvest. I picked a few leaves of chard, which is also showing some leaf miner damage. I had never grown nor eaten it before. I can't say I really liked it raw, it had a slightly salty, bitter flavor. I cooked the rest with the spinach, and couldn't tell which was chard and which was spinach. I haven't checked the turnips in this bed to see if they've been ravaged by wireworms. I'll check them soon, and if they show damage, I'll pull them and plant something else in their place.
The lettuce in bed #9 is supposed to be Iceberg, but it, like the ones in the north garden, doesn't show any sign of forming a head. The plants get huge! I haven't harvested any outer leaves from these, as the birds and slugs have kept them quite tattered. There are red noodle beans planted behind them, but the plants suffered from the early cold weather, just as most of the other beans did. I'll be replanting this bed too. That's a Russian Baby tomato on the right, grown from seeds from Mr. H.
Speaking of reseeding, I gave up on this bed in the north garden. I had a nice crop of baby carrots showing one day, and the next day they were eaten right to the ground. Only one lone carrot survived. The pole beans had also been decapitated. Yesterday I double dug the entire bed and replanted it. Carrot seeds are under the boards until they begin to germinate, and the minute I see signs of life, the bird netting is going up until the plants are large enough to fend for themselves.
I may have to resort to bird netting on the strawberry beds, too. As much as I dislike the netting, I do want to have some strawberries that haven't been pecked by the birds.
Soon I'll not be able to get to the other side of the north garden from the shed. The brassica garden is right up against the fence on the right, and the flowers to the left are getting too tall to step over. Speaking of tall, notice the lilies against the wood fence. They are over 5' tall this year, and loaded with buds.
Some of the lily plants have as many as ten buds! I'm anxious for them all to open, they should put on a gorgeous show.
Behind the shed, the lettuce bed is keeping us well fed. Protected from birds, there is lettuce in three stages of growth. As I pull mature plants, there are seedlings to take their place. My seedlings are getting so large, I'm harvesting the leaves and planting the root ball. I hope they grow!
Two loaves of bread, fresh from the oven.
These wireworms were all found in a cluster in the soil after pulling just one small turnip. They are about one inch in length and very hard, which is probably why they are called "wire" worms.
Wireworm damage on a small turnip root.
The damage goes deep. Every turnip I checked had major damage, leaving them inedible.
Mr. Granny is finally eating garden lettuce, rather than insisting on grocery store Iceberg. Of course, it has to be a wilted lettuce salad, with a sweet and sour hot bacon dressing on it, and lots of crisp bacon bits. We easily eat two small heads of butterhead or red leaf lettuce in one sitting when it's fixed this way. The green tops of the onions were also used in the salad, while the bulbs were diced up into the spaghetti sauce. Mr. G was also impressed with that sauce, which was made entirely with either fresh, canned or dried produce from the garden...not counting the sausage, of course. He had two huge helpings! I must say, the bread was exceptionally good tonight. It was light, with a finer crumb than I get when I use the bread machine. This loaf was mixed up in the food processor.
You can tell what my favorite part of the meal is. I usually eat my dinner on a salad plate, as half helpings are just plenty for my appetite. My salad is always larger than my entree.
The first chore on my list was to take care of the disaster that is the Fortex pole beans. They just couldn't handle being attacked by cold weather and slugs/bugs/birds. At first I was going to just dig them under and then replant, but I decided to leave them all in place (there's always hope!) and sacrifice the few radishes that were left in the adjoining row.
Small, but large enough to go into Mr. Granny's salad tonight. Our rabbit, Cookie, will eat all of the radish tops, so there is no waste here.
Of course, I kicked over the beans while I was preparing a bed for them.
There we go.....a second row that will hopefully fill in for all the missing vines from the earlier planting.
And then I kicked over the container of remaining beans. Again.
The second chore on my list was to dig up a few morning glories from the right side of this bed and move them to the back, so that the entire corner can someday be covered with vines. Those that were along the back froze right after they were set out. The others had been direct seeded. They all managed to survive, so thinning was necessary.
A final cleanup and the kennel garden is nearly finished.
Just one more chore to do in the kennel garden, and that is to plant up a pot of bush cucumbers. I don't know why they call them "bush", as they always manage to do a pretty good job of climbing. They did well last year, planted in a pot and trained up a tepee structure, then trained onto the chain link of the kennel. A pot was filled with potting mix, then watered well with hot water. Hot water wets the dry mix immediately, where cold water just likes to sit on top and take forever to soak in.
Once the potting mix cooled down, two seedlings were planted. Two more will be standing by, just in case the first two don't survive.
Not on my list of to-do, but I took time to admire a California Poppy. I'm sure it's happy to feel the sunshine on its shoulders, too.
The instructions were to plant the entire postcard in the garden or in a pot, so I filled a container with potting mix and moistened it using hot water. Hot water moistens a dry mix immediately, so you don't have to soak it for hours on end.
I placed the postcard on top of the damp potting mix. I was tempted to soak the card in water first, but I'd have felt terrible if all the seeds had fallen off of it, so I just followed the directions.
I added a marker, so I wouldn't forget the contents of the container.
Then I sat the container out in the gentle rain. Whatever grows will be a surprise!
