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8/19/03 Pictures Wow! It’s been awhile since I’ve written! The garden has fell to some disarray but not to bad. Weeds are making their way but they aren’t choking anything out. Peppers are starting to turn red. Tomatoes ain’t doin jack. They are kind of a disappointment. The zucchini is dead. A worm must have found them. Beans did well! And now for the good part! The corn did great! My parents and I had a few ears tonight for dinner and I brought a few home with me and took a pic so you could see! 7/16/03 Pictures I finally got into the garden and picked the beans. They were quite nice and I got a decent amount, a little more than a plastic grocery bags worth. Some of the plants were small but just loaded with beans! I think they would do better if they weren’t shaded by the now several feet high corn next to it. The pepper plants are loaded with peppers and flowers! I’m gonna have tons of peppers! To bad I don’t like to eat them. My mom cut the first zucchini today too! Hopefully it’s one of many to come. My mom shreds them and freezes then in freezer bags and we break them out for cooking from time to time over the winter. On the downside, the pumpkin that came up on it’s own isn’t doing to well, we are afraid that maybe a boring work has found it. And Aly’s corn is coming along but her sunflowers don’t appear to have come up. And I’ve taken note that I put on plenty of fertilizer, everything is dark green and I can see that some weeds think it’s too much and have signs of over fertilization. I’ll back off some next year. I really do like the Espoma fertilizer! 6/27/03 Pictures It’s amazing what a little sunshine will do. Here are the pictures to show it! 6/24/03 My nieces are visiting from North Carolina for the next two weeks so they’ll be helping me in the garden. The past two days have been sunny after heavy rains over the weekend. I weeded and did a little hoeing on Monday and the ground was somewhat dry enough to rototill today, Tuesday, so I did. That helped clean up some weeds that were hanging on. My niece, Aly, got a row in the garden. She planted silver queen sweet corn and sunflowers. It’s a little late but the stuff should do ok. We also planted a few more zucchini seeds, hopefully they’ll do better than the first batch I planted. Oh, the corn and sun flowers had some Plant Tone mixed in with their soil. The garden over all looks pretty good with the exception one row of peas. Some stuff like the peppers looks like it could use some nitrogen. They didn’t get fertilized when I planted them so that’s why they are like that now. Some fish emulsion will clear that up. I’m guessing the plant tone didn’t have all it’s nutrients leached out of the soil with all the rain we’ve had. 6/18/03 I’ve been in the garden twice this week rototilling and weeding. It was actually dry enough on Monday to rototill and I’m glad it was or else the weeds would have taken over. It’s rained since then and the ground is saturated so I had to settle for weeding and sloppy hoeing. I’m surprised but pleasantly surprised that the weeds are under control and not an imminent threat to overthrow my kingdom. In the battle against the dastardly rodent my mom acquired a live trap. We set and baited it with apples and strawberries on Monday but come today, Wednesday, we’ve yet to trap one. On the plus side the garden doesn’t seem to be getting molested by the ground hogs. I think they prefer the safety of the freshly sprouted soybeans in the field next to my parent’s property. They can eat all the soybeans they want! I wish I would’ve taken my camera once again. I have no idea why I didn’t. Guess I was in a rush once again. 6/10/03 Pictures I took pictures! 6/5/03 It was sunny today! I headed out to the garden after work to plant the peppers. Guess what I found? I found that the beast that chewed off my tomatoes has really torn into the garden. Peas were hit real hard and the beans didn’t go untouched either. I gotta do something about this problem. On the up side the raspberries are showing signs of life and the peppers were planted. No pics because I forgot the camera again. 5/29/03 Pictures RAIN AND CLOUDS! That’s all the weather has had to offer until today! We actually had sunshine! So I took some pictures of the garden. And being in a hurry I forgot to take pictures of the strawberries and raspberries. No big deal, they aren’t much to look at yet. And that rat bastard chewed off another tomato! Why must they do that? Otherwise things look ok. Hoping all the wet weather hasn’t caused the bean or corn seeds to rot in the ground. 5/23/03 w00t! w00t! The raspberries and strawberries were delivered today! I’m so happy! I headed straight to the garden to plant my prized plants! I was alittle disappointed because the one variety of raspberries I ordered was sold out! L Only the Encore red raspberry arrived, the Marionberry black raspberry didn’t. And thanks to Dad for helping me plant them. I can’t wait to see how they do! 5/20/03 It’s raining too much! Today I had to rush home from work and then off to the garden at my parent’s house. It rained last weekend and I couldn’t get anything planted. Today the ground was finally dry enough to do anything with. Luckily I had today, tonight it’s supposed to start raining and continue through at least Monday. That’s 6 days of rain! So I’m happy I had the opportunity to plant two rows of beans, two rows of corn, two groups of zucchini and a pumpkin that my nephew, Tillman, started. The pumpkin was pretty deprived of nutrients and in the need of light but I think it’ll pull through. There was also a gift on the garden! Horse manure! My parents came across some and threw it on the lower half of the garden. I’m curious to see what it does. I also put liberal amounts of Plant Tone down for everything I planted. I hope I’m not over doing it. Guess I’ll find out. I’m still waiting for my raspberries and strawberries. I hope they are still alive by the time they get here. And I’ll probably have to plant them in the rain. Fun! Lettuce looks great! And some carrots came up! The carrot seeds left over from last year that didn’t come up last year didn’t come up this year either. Guess they were defective. Glad this year’s came up. The bugs still eating the tea and I didn’t get a chance to try more neem. The onions are starting to bolt, peas look ok, first row of beans are up and tomatoes look ok. I didn’t take any pictures because it was dark by the time I was done. Not much of anything new to look at. I would’ve liked to have taken a picture of the lettuce though. 5/10/03 Pictures Once again I made it to my parents not expecting to work in the garden and did anyways. Pics of today’s activities and atrocities will be up later when I make it back with my camera. Now on to the atrocity part. Some bastard creature severed the top of one of my tomato plants! What kind of vile beast would do such a thing?! I’m pretty mad about it. Ok, enough about that. I can’t handle thinking about it anymore. Now on to the activity part. I placed a 10’ wide piece of clear plastic the length of the garden on the grass above the retaining wall. Heat will build up under the plastic, killing the grass and making it easier to rototill. It will also kill off any seeds. It just makes life easier. My dad also planted some rhubarb, which a guy from his work gave to him, on the lower side of the garden. I don’t know anything about rhubarb so we’ll see how it works out. I also ordered red and black raspberries and strawberries online. They should be here shortly. It’s a little late in the season to plant them but I don’t care. I’ll make them live. J 5/4/03 Pictures Hmmm…the fish emulsion still smells pretty strong. I use the stuff on my houseplants in a diluted mix and the smell subsides in about a day, hopefully the stuff on the garden will soon also. My main worry is that it’ll attract animals that will dig up the garden trying to find fish. I also built a retaining wall along the one side of the garden. The garden is on a slight incline and the soil was flowing down hill so I put an end to that. I’ll now have a tiered garden that isn’t only practical but also appealing to the eye. I plan to place plastic on the upper side of the wall that isn’t in the garden to kill off the grass so it’ll be easy tilling and weed free for next year. Since it’ll be the side closest to the house I plan on keeping it primarily flowers for visual appeal. I really didn’t plan on doing this today but it just kind of happened. Since I didn’t plan on building it today I didn’t take my camera and therefore no pics. Sorry. Next time I’m at my parents, where my garden is located, I’ll take my camera and get some pics. (Update: I took the camera not long after and now there are some pics) 5/3/03 Pictures Rototilled and weeded. Also planted another row of sugar peas, and a first row of string beans. Three tomato plants made it into the ground too. The peas, beans and tomatoes had a liberal amount of plant tone mix into the soil. I fertilized the lettuce, carrots and poppies with fish emulsion, kelp and superthrive. The fish emulsion smells pretty strong. The smell should dissipate though. Sprinkled some bone meal around some onions left over from last year. And the bugs are already beating up my mint so I mixed up some neem and dish detergent (it’s a surfactant, meaning it makes the water sheet on the leaves instead of beading giving better coverage) and applied it. I also started some sweet peppers seeds inside, and have them on a heating pad. I’m getting started on them alittle late so I’ll have to try to really push their growth. I don’t think the raspberries I planted are still alive. Oh well, nothing like planting sticks. I’ll have to get some more from a different place. 4/5/03 Pictures Planted a variety of lettuces, two types of carrots, some poppies, two red raspberry plants and two rows of sugar peas. Also fertilized mint with 5-3-3 Espoma Plant Tone. I’m going to try organic gardening this year, last year the chemical fertilizers seemed to do the trick but I’d like something alittle friendlier to the soil. Plus there’s less of a chance or over fertilizing and burning the plants. In my organic arsenal is the Espoma Plant Tone I already mentioned plus Alaskan 5-1-1 fish emulsion, Espoma 4-12-0 Bone Meal, and SeaCom PGR kelp extract that it 0-4-4. Now this one isn’t organic but I don’t need much of it and it is a good growth stimulant, and that would be Super Thrive. If you ever need to promote root growth then try it, it contains vitamin B1, which is a root stimulant. I use it with success on cuttings. Pesticides, they are yucky but sometimes ya need to kill creatures to protect the plants. My mint gets infested with some sort of bug that pierces the leaves and pretty much ruins the mint. For that I’m trying Neem oil. Not sure if it’ll work but I’m going to try it. Copyright © JungleBoogieMonster
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