Garden update

Well, the gardens have mostly been tended by my children the last month or so as we have been finishing a remodel in the house and busy with company visiting. I went out this evening to get a peek at how things were doing. It is a jungle in there! The spacing of the plants is working fine, hardly any weeds and things are growing beautifully! It is incredible how tall the corn and tomatoes and pole beans are, like 10-12' each! The raised beds and close planting prescribed in the square foot gardening method have worked out wonderfully - we have harvested tomatoes, beans, swiss chard, zucchini, cucumber, and peas so far - that is the good news. :-)

The bad news is that I didn't follow directions very well on how far apart to put the *beds* - as in there is NO walking room in there between the beds since the plants have grown SO much! It is hard to imagine when you are planting little seeds that things will grow THAT much, but they have and it's wonderful - but now it's difficult to get around in there. Another difficulty has been the tomato stakes - I had put off getting stakes and wanted to find a cheap solution, just ended up using long sticks - which have rotted and broken and were not tall enough (who knew 10-12' would be needed?) - so the tomatoes are everywhere, literally.

When I went in this evening for the first time in several weeks, it looked like a herd of elephants had tried to squeeze through. The kids had told me that they knocked over the pole bean teepee trying to reach ones off the very top, I had imagined it leaning, but it was actually on the ground and after trying unsuccessfully to right it - I just pulled them all up. I now have a free bed to plant a fast-grower or a fall crop. It also gives more room to get to the bush beans and the tomatoes. I also harvested the rest of the chard and cut most of the dill to hang and dry. I found a cauliflower! I had almost given up on that, so was happy to discover it. The carrots are getting big and the corn is getting close to harvest.

The small garden has been doing fine, even without us ever getting that fence up. There are a couple large pumpkins growing, and I found a little yellow squash started. The watermelon plants are kinda small still, but starting to flower. I should add some fertilizer to all of those beds. The potatoes look great and I did end up getting about 10 small asparagus sprouts after all.

In the cold bed, the cabbage is finally starting to form heads and there is a small broccoli on the plant that is remaining. There are also a couple of lettuce heads that I had planted later that are getting bigger and haven't bolted (yet!).

The strawberries are doing wonderfully! They actually have put runners out all over the place and I need to go cut them so they can grow good roots and not spread quite yet. I look forward to yummy strawberries next year!

Weeds have taken over much of the flower beds, but we did get some lovely blooms. We have been struggling with a puppy who likes to roll on plants and has flattened several things - even eaten some rose buds! The herb bed has not had much attention this year at all, but the oregano and sage in the main garden has done well and I may try to move some of that to the herb bed to see if it will come again next year. I hope to plant some more bulbs in the fall and increase some of the flowering time and beauty toward the front/driveway side of the house next year.

The bugs have been a nuisance at best. The hornworms and squash bugs being the worst so far. Japanese beetles have not been as bad as previous years. I will post later the details of the sprays/powders I have found helpful.

So, that's a summary report. Will get more pics and report back on harvest and storage later.