Its a Jungle Out There

I have seven 8 feet by 4 feet raised garden beds.  I have decided to show you, one by one, each of them and how full to bursting they are with plants.  I have tried very hard to keep things under control and not over crowd things, but you will see that things are getting crazy.  I kinda like a bit of crazy, though.

From front to back:

Raised Bed #1

4 types of potatoes and one tomato plant

On the other side there is a buckwheat plant that escaped.  They are kinda pretty, with heart shaped leaves

and beautiful sprays of delicate white and pink flowers.

Raised Bed #2

Garlic, yellow onions, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, brussel sprouts and peas. The peas and broccoli will be pulled out later today and some tomatoes will go in.

This picture shows the peas on a homemade trellis of plum tree prunings.

Raised Bed #3

3 types of kale, garlic, sweet onions, carrots, celery, two tomato plants and romaine lettuce.

This picture shows the last of the romaine lettuce. It is about to go to seed.  I will have to use it or lose it this week.  The three types of kale up close:

Raised Bed #4

Seven tomato plants, one zucchini plant, a row of three types of cucumbers on a trellis, two Cinderella pumpkin vines.

A picture from the other side shows the pumpkins.  I found and killed a squash bug already. I then spent a half hour looking over every inch of every squash and pumpkin leaf in the garden for eggs. I really hate those things.  They suck the life right out of your vines.

I have pruned them to single vines.  They are crawling on the ground towards the fence.  I will let them branch out now.

Here you can see the cucumbers.  They are just reaching the trellis now.  They are having a bit of trouble with aphids, but are doing okay. I am a bit worried that one of the varieties of cucumbers I planted is a bush variety and will not grow up the trellis well.

 These four plants are still only about 6 inches tall.

Raised Bed #5

2 tomato plants, five gourd vines, two warty pumpkins, seven okra plants, and several bush beans.  The beans are cranberry beans.  I recently planted some edemame beans in the empty areas where the cranberry beans didn't come up. They are supposed to grow as a bush also.  They haven't come up yet.

From the other side you can see one of the warty pumpkin plants.  The other is planted next to the trellis.  I am trying to see if I can grow it up the trellis.  This one in the picture is getting pruned for single vine growth just like the Cinderella pumpkins in bed # 4 until it reaches the ground towards the fence.

This is where the Hansel eggplant is.

The gourds are growing up the trellis like pros with almost no help from me.  I have to tuck wayward branching vines back into the trellis to keep them from reaching across to the cucumber trellis or the tomato cage sometimes.  I think I will start trimming those branches off soon.  The plants are getting very large.

This one has reached and passed the top of the trellis.

Raised Bed #6

This bed has been the experimental bed from the start. At one point I had about twenty purple cabbages in here.  I have thinned that down to two.  There three green cabbages left now that I have picked one, about five fingerling golden potato plants, a row of fava beans, two tomato plants and several volunteer dill plants.  There are a few celery plants and cilantro, but frankly I haven't seen them lately.  They may have been crowded out by the potatoes.

The is where I picked the cabbage.  The other three look ready to pick as well.  The purple cabbages haven't started making heads yet.

The other eggplant is next to this bed.

Raised Bed #7

This will ultimately be a strawberry bed with only strawberries, but right now it has a few herbs, a cabbage, a raspberry, and a few fava been plants, also.  I plan to build a raised bed in the back just for herbs later this year.

Every one of the beds also has some marigolds and nasturtiums planted to attract pollinators and beneficial insects.  I also want to make the garden pretty with lots of color.

I have 7 and a half pots full of pepper plants of different varieties: rainbow mixed bell peppers, cayenne, Hungarian wax, jalapeno, and Serrano.

  

The mint plant we use for mojitos is doing very well despite the fact that we have been drinking a few mojitos already.

Along with the raised beds and pots we also have this large bean trellis and hills of pumpkins, squash and corn in the back yard that we haven't landscaped yet. There are two more Cinderella pumpkins, two more warty pumpkins, a kabocha squash, and three butternut squash.  The trellis has one side planted with scarlet emperor runner beans, and the other with regular pole green beans.  The pole green beans have been really hard hit by the earwigs. I have replanted the missing ones twice. The scarlet runners are less susseptable for some reason and are really going to town.  You can see them in the left of this picture reaching up over 2/3 the way to the top of the trellis.  The trellis is almost eight feet tall.

Here you can see the painted mountain corn.  I have planted pole beans three times now for the three sisters garden experiment.  The earwigs keep eating them off before they get a chance to get started.  This last time I covered them with potting mix, planted half scarlet runner beans and added some pellet fertilizer. I really want them to grow. After those come up I will plant a pumpkin in each center.

This corn is planted in rows around the compost to hide it from view.  It is about knee high.  What is that old saying? Knee high by the Fourth of July? Well, I am two weeks early, so I guess that is good.

The compost is doing  pretty well.  The stuff on the edges doesn't break down like the stuff in the middle, but I have stirred it three times and added more stuff in layers of carbon and nitrogen on top.  The stuff in the middle and bottom is probably ready to use, but I will leave it until after harvest this fall and keep adding to it.

You can see from these pictures that the garden has become a huge jungle.  I am still watering it each night by hand, which is a bit of a pain, but it is my me time.  I kind of enjoy getting out there at twilight and just mindlessly watering for a while. It helps me unwind.  Sometimes my hubby comes out and brings me a beer, and we chat about our day.  That is also very nice.  Twice now, I have been very busy and have had to ask him to water for me.  He hasn't complained too much, but he has mentioned that we should get around to automating some of it soon.  That will be nice.  Right now it takes me about half an hour to 45 minutes to water.  It is very dry here with very low humidity and hot temperatures, so it almost never happens that we get to skip a day of watering.  I don't wish for rain though because it is getting close to cherry harvest here and that is bad for the cherries.  Also, this time of the year rain, if we get any, usually comes with thunderstorms, hail and wind, which are all bad for the garden.

Okra and Corn Sprouts

I had fun this afternoon after work taking pictures of all of the new sprouts.  Sadly the long awaited beans have not sprouted yet, but lots of other stuff has.

Loads more carrots have come up.

Almost all of the nasturtiums have come up.

Our first okra sprout.  You can't see it very well yet, but it's there all right.

A few painted mountain corn have come up.

The mammoth sunflowers I planted last week are already coming up.

I planted two different types of sunflowers.

My potatoes have started to bloom already.  It is only May 16th.

Here is one of my celery plants I planted from seed on March 3rd.  Celery sure does grow slowly.  I hope I actually get some celery before it frosts.

The Cinderella Pumpkin has two true leaves now. Yay!

The zucchini has a true leaf and a half.

The cucumbers almost have one true leaf opened up.

The cilantro is finally growing.  I have to say that I do not like peat pots.  I had forgotten that since last year, but I won't forget it again.  They dry out really fast, and you have to carefully rip them off your plants in several pieces before you plant them.  Don't believe anyone who says you can leave them on the plant when you plant them out.  I forgot this fact, even though I did already learn it, and plunked these cilantro in the ground.  They sat there and complained to me until I said, "what is your deal? Why aren't you growing right?"  I scooped one out of the ground to bury it deeper because it looked like it had popped up and was kinda floppy.  Lo and behold, the peat pot was still on it.  I knew right away that was the problem.  I ripped the peat pot off and planted it right back in the dirt.  Now it is happy.  I did the same thing to all four of the cilantro plants.  I have also direct seeded the next round of cilantro, but they haven't come up yet. I plan on planting more very two weeks.

My husband and I went to Lowe's to get two more bags of potting mix so I could re-pot my smaller tomato plants.  We both thought that we should buy this sweet mint plant and a pot to grow it in.  We see mojitos in our future now.  If only we could grow a lime tree here.

I also finally figured out what variety of eggplant it was that I loved so much when I grew it two years ago.  Now I know it was a Hansel.  I thought I had gotten the right kind last year, but as soon as it started growing I knew it wasn't the same.  I didn't like it as well either.  Last year I bought an Ichiban because the picture of the fruit looked similar, but the plant is totally different.  It grows with a different habit.  The Hansel grows taller and with large branches all with fruit, and it also has dark purple colored stems and spines.  It makes lots more fruit, and the fruit are delicious.

This is my eggplant I grew from seed.  It is a new kind I have not tried before.  It makes small round fruit.  The picture of the fruit that was on the seed packet looks like the eggplants that my friend Sean Stephan gave me from his garden a few years ago.  They were delicious. He also told me that they made a lot of fruit.  More than their family could eat, if I remember right.  Come to think of it, of coarse that is true, or I wouldn't have gotten so many.

This is our first pea.  It is the same one featured in a previous post.  It won't be long now before it is ripe.  My daughter checks it everyday.  She loves peas.

Looky, looky.  My graft is growing.  I grafted two branches, but one broke off in a wind storm a few weeks ago.  This one is finally growing leaves.  I am so excited.  you can still see the thick layer of wax I put on to keep it from drying out.  It is cracking off of the parts that are growing.

Here is the end bud.  The leaves are even bigger than the leaves on the main part of the tree.

The strawberries are coming along nicely.  I don't think I will get enough this first year for a batch of jam, but definitely enough for a batch of strawberry ice cream  and fresh fruit on pancakes and cereal a few times.  Yummy.  I can hardly wait.

Next post will be about insects in the garden. There is some cool stuff out there today.