Garden Rehabilitation

Well, it's been a LOT of work (and a lot of composted manure and straw!), but I am slowly getting the garden back on track. I was out of town, and sick, and the garden just went haywire. I think I've managed to rescue most of what was in it, and it's early enough to plant fall crops of almost everything, so that's what I've been doing. I've also been laying newspapers and mulch in the walkways to discourage weeds.

As a whole...

This was the broccoli and radishes. We ate a lot of radishes, but I didn't care for the broccoli properly, and all I got were "buttons". I have seed, though, and the beginning of August is the time to plant again for a fall crop! Now this bed has carrots, lettuce, spinach, radishes, a fast growing "Patio" mini tomato variety, sugar snap peas, celery and cucumbers planted in it.

A new bed... I took out the strawberries, and their box, and made two in-ground beds. This one has corn, lettuce and radishes planted in it. The other one will be a fall crop of peas, once I figure out what to use for a trellis!


The pumpkins have been growing like weeds! Here is one of the hills... with a couple of potential pumpkins!

One of the apples on one of the new apple trees!

The peppers are doing VERY well! There are lots of little "babies" on all the plants! I usually pick 5 of the plants green, and let the other three go red. I'm looking forward to eating some of these soon!

I hope to be eating some tomatoes soon, too!

I have learned a lot about gardening and gardens while I was so sick- the Internet is a wonderful resource! One thing I learned is that I was not using the raised beds to their fullest- you can plant stuff so much closer in a raised bed than you can in rows, because the soil is deeper! That's why the fall-crop bed has so much planted in it.

I also learned that most vegetables will germinate and grow faster in warmer weather- which is why I have planted things like cucumbers and corn now. The warm weather will accelerate growth, and they should ripen and be ready to eat before fall!

And lastly I learned (from experience) that it's really, really easy to let a garden get away from you! But now that I am back to my normal healthy self I can get out every day and work in it. When I was sick I could hardly get out of bed, let alone go weed and hoe and water a garden!