Fewer and further between

Good grief. Another 10 days has passed without a blog entry. I'm still playing in the garden, but I don't ever seem to have enough time in the day to play in the garden, take pictures, resize the pictures, and post an entry to my blog. I get the whole play in the garden and take pictures part done, but it's the next two steps that seem to gum up the whole works. I've had to resort to making short two line entries in the Word version of my Garden Journal. So now I'm going to cut and paste the stuff I've been doing over the past week and a half. Read on. If you dare.

June 4, 2009

Thursday was a mixed bag. My Cherokee Purple tomato got too much rain and split wide open. It was a little depressing to pull that tomato off and toss it over in the compost pile. *sigh* However, I did notice that my black eyed peas have started to bloom, and the rest of the garden very much enjoyed the rain. Before I came back inside for gardening, I also noticed that my corn is starting to get some tassels or something. That was just the little bright spot in the day to help me overcome the loss of my tomato.

I think I’m taking this whole gardening thing a little too seriously.

June 5, 2009

My corn is finally getting tall, and I’ve been worried for a week or so that a strong wind is going to come and blow it over, because Mel B warns of such crop devastation. We don’t get much wind to speak of in East Texas. Well, except for when those pesky Hurricanes Ike and Rita pay a visit in September and October, but hopefully my corn crop will be safely harvested and digested by then. Of course, I do plan on doing a fall crop of corn. Anyway, I thought a cattle panel would be a good thing to use for corn support. Bend the thing into a U-shape and then stick the ends in the dirt. My hubby, ever patient man that he is, once again obliged me and implemented my plan.

I’m pleased with the way it turned out, because before I thought of the cattle panel I wasn’t really able to envision what Mel was describing. That’s one of the few things he didn’t put pictures of in his book. Or maybe I just missed it….

Another surprise… My eggplant is about to bloom!! Woo hoo!

Baby cherry tomatoes

Almost blooming eggplant

Watermelon's still growing

The corn after my honey put up the cattle panel

Check out the tassel!!!

Charlie's green beans

American melon blooming, blooming, blooming

This head of cauliflower is looking normal

This one not so much. What's with all the purple??

June 7, 2009

We had to go out of town for a graduation this weekend, and I must admit I was kinda worried about leaving my garden. Did I give it enough water? What if swarms of locusts (in Biblical proportions no less) showed up to dine on my SFG and no one was there to protect it? Etc, etc. Turns out the garden survived. Whew!

June 9, 2009

We had to go to the lake house to turn on the power for the painter Monday evening, so I wasn’t able to do my evening garden check. Surprisingly I got up kinda early enough to take a quick peek at it this a.m. I really need to tie up some more of that quick pick tomato plant. It’s leaning dangerously close to the ground. The cherry tomatoes are coming along nicely. A handful of Black Krims and Cherokee Purple are popping up too. Corn is looking good. Jalapeno peppers were eaten. What! Something ate my jalapeno pepper plant!!! All of the leaves and most of the peppers. ARGH!!!! They were just about ready to pick and eat!!!!! My inclination was that it was a rabbit or deer. I was leaning more toward deer. I went to work fuming about the carnage and trying to figure out HOW I was going to keep deer out of my peppers. I should’ve bought HOT ones! That would have taught them!!

I had some friends over tonight for a tastefully simple party, and as I was giving garden tours to my friends who had the misfortune not to see my latest obsession, I pointed out the jalapeno plant devastation. Then I noticed something had been munching on my eggplant. The eggplant is on the inside of the box and is up fairly high. Now I KNEW it had to be a deer. No rabbit would hop to the inside of the box and start munching on leaves waaay up in the air. Too much work. As I grasped a leaf of the eggplant in disgust, I felt something that didn’t quite feel right. It was not fuzzy like the back of an eggplant leaf. It was kinda squishy and a little cold. Huh?? Turned the thing over and found a GINORMOUS caterpillar. Dad says it is a horn worm, and apparently this critter is responsible for all the damage in my garden. Sheesh!

Tomorrow a.m. I plan on inspecting the garden for more worms, and I’m gonna kill those suckers. Too bad I had guests over. I really wanted to run out and take pics of the damage and do more looking, but I had to be a good hostess. Tomorrow it’s Hasta La Vista worms………………

The culprit.

Tasty tomato

Yesterday we had friends over, and while I was showing off my garden, I noticed there was a bud on each of my American melon plants. Since we were hosting friends I couldn't run back into the house and grab my camera like I really wanted. So today when I went out to take pics, the buds had already flowered out. In addition the plants are starting to put out little whiskers. I tied one of the plants to the nylon netting, but the other one is still too small to tie it off. I picked up some garden twine at Target this weekend, and it blends into the garden much better than the white strips I used before.

I had to tie up some more of the tomato plants today. One of the branches of the tomato plant had fallen over. The vine had actually broke. Hopefully it'll be okay. I got to pick one of our Quick Picks today. It was delicious!!
Yep. It tasted just as good as it looks!

Baby Sweet 100 tomatoes

This Cherokee Purple tomato is almost ready to pick

And another is on the way

I'm beginning to think my cauliflower just might make a head of cauliflower. Keep your fingers crossed folks!

My peppers are really looking great!

More baby green beans

Check it out! My watermelons have finally started to grow!

More gardening photos

I'm not doing too much in the garden these days. I'm in between harvests, so I mostly just go check on it each day to make sure no critters or creepy crawlies are destroying my plants and see if I need to water. Right now I'm watering about once a week, but I can imagine I'll need to up that as the temps continue to rise. I'm still at a loss as to what I should plant in the square where my sugar snaps are. I've thought about putting a squash, but I think it'll be too close to some of my other plants.

The Quick Pick tomato is turning colors nicely.

Looks like something is eating my eggplant, but I didn't find anything on it. I will continue to monitor the situation.

Look how big the cauliflower plant is getting

The other eggplant is looking very healthy and growing nicely.

One of the little heads of cauliflower. Have I mentioned I'm worried it's going to go to seed?

The American melon continues to grow like crazy every day!

A little baby green bean

Cherokee Purple

All tied up

At least the tomatoes are. They have long needed to be tied up to the trellises, and I finally took time to do that yesterday evening. It's my first time to tie up tomatoes, and I guess I did an okay job. The tomatoes aren't complaining anyway.

Black Krim and Cherokee Purple after being tied up.

A Cherokee Purple starting to change colors

One of our Quick Picks

Tied up Quick Picks

The eggplants have really taken off lately

The corn is really growing

The cauliflower head is getting bigger too.

Fooled You peppers are looking very good

My biggest pepper

ACHILLEA Coronation Gold from Bluestone Perennials

Shasta Daisy. Some sort of bug got on my shasta daisies, and they don't look so hot. :(

Our strawberries are still lookin good

The green beans are still blooming

Look how much my American melon has grown in just a couple of days.

I love the smell of tomatoes on my hands

There's just something so earthy about it. I feel like I've really been in the garden when I smell like mater plants.

I can't believe it's been two weeks since I posted something. I've been working in the garden, but I just haven't had time to post to the blog. Plus I took some pics of the garden week before last, and when I came in to download them they were just gone from my memory card. I have yet to figure out why that happened. After that I just didn't worry about making a blog entry. Pictures, to me, are half the fun of a blog. Last week I was out of town on business, so now I'm playing catch up on my blogging.

We had a pretty busy Memorial Day weekend. We didn't head out the lake house as I had originally planned. We stayed at home and worked in the yard. Charlie had gotten a head start on the yard before I got in Friday evening, but we put some finishing touches on it Saturday. After a trip to Home Depot I came home and put some water soluble Miracle Grow fertilizer on the garden. Yeah, my aspirations of growing an organic garden went down the tubes when I started getting garden envy. While I was fertilizing I noticed that ants were all over one of my pea plants. They'd pretty much sheared one leaf off the plant and were working on another one. I had no idea that ants would do that. So I soaked 'em down some Sevin Dust. Hasta la vista ants....

I picked about a dozen strawberries out of my strawberry box. So far I'm not a huge fan of the strawberries. Most of them are very tart, and they're pretty dinky. Maybe I'm not doing something right, and that's why they aren't very sweet. Anyone have any suggestions??

The maters are growing very well.

Quick Pick

Cherokee Purple tomato

Baby black Krim

My corn is finally growing!

My American melons are getting big

One of my heads of cauliflower. I hope it stays cool enough that this won't go seed.

A good sized Fooled You pepper. Won't be long before I can pick it

Several more Fooled Yous on the other plant.

My sugar snaps are pretty well done, but the beans, peas, eggplants, and maters are coming on

This watermelon plant is still so dinky. Dunno what the deal is.