Garden

We got the weather station set up in the garden last week. At first the local birds were intimidated by the movement in the wind. But within a day we noticed one perched briefly on the rain gauge at the top of the post.

We had more mulch delivered to finish covering the bare ground. All the bare ground is now covered.

The stakes in the hillside are marking holes that were dug out in preparation for next year’s bare root planting.

Well, the corn did not make it for dinner for the Forth of July festivities. But it did get to just starting to put out tassels.

Unlike the corn, the green beans were ready. This is the same variety as I planted last year. Actually, the seeds are from the same packet. The germination was still good and the plants are prolific.

I tried a few other interesting winter squash varieties. Since we like acorn squash, I found other varieties of it — this one is “Cream of the Crop”, a white variety.

Here is another of the acorn squash, “Celebration”, that I am also trying this year.

Most of the beds have filled in. Getting between and around some of them is getting difficult.

The fruit trees were all trimmed back a couple weeks ago. The idea is to prune in the summer to control the size of the tree. We want to keep the trees small enough to work without ladders. It seemed very drastic at the time, but the trees responded by putting out buds where they were cut. We are going to end up with much bushier trees after one year than if we had just waited for winter to prune.

More mulch delivered. This time a bit nicer type, “walk-on mulch”, to spread around the raised beds. The weed barrier cloth might work by itself in other situations but here the wind was getting under it in some spots and it was a tripping hazard.

The trees in the orchard are finally starting to look like trees instead of sticks with a few leaves. Even the pears are finally getting into the act.

Peas are about ready for picking. Or maybe they already are. An obvious mistake now, but planting shell peas, snap peas and snow peas next to each other seemed like a reasonable idea for care. Unfortunately, it is a bit hard to tell one from the other once they started growing into each other in a tangled mass.

Nasturtiums that were planted between the tomatoes along the edge of the beds are blooming. Supposedly the flowers are edible. It makes the garden a bit prettier to have the additional color.

he bed with the corn now has the fourth planting just emerging.

A small cantaloupe is starting to grow.

While some of the young fruit trees are starting to take off, some of the others like the four pears in the foreground are still sulking.

Some of the plants are starting to put out significant growth. Cages for the tomatoes were made from concrete reinforcing wire. Some of the rest of the 150′ roll was used to create trellises to support vining plants.

The lettuce is just about ready to have leaves picked.

Corn is being planted every two weeks so that we will have a long harvest if it works out.