Garden Stroll

The garden is coming along but slowly.  The hot weather has up and walked away around here! 

Don't get me wrong...I'm not complaining about temperatures in the 80's.  I love it!  But this is April weather.  We had unseasonably hot temperatures in April and everything in the garden struggled to get started.  No rain either. 

Now it seems that we're moving into a slightly cooler cycle with wetter weather.  Rain is forecast (Yeah!) but the temperatures will hover right around 80.  Now 80 degrees might seem hot to a lot of you but we're used to 90+ degrees once May hits so this is unusually cool.  Hopefully this will allow the garden to rebound a bit.

Anyway, as I mentioned a few posts ago, my beans have popped.  I planted a LOT of beans knowing that between the slugs and the bugs I'd loose some.  Seems that one out of every 6-7 starts have been munched on.  I suppose DE can only do so much.

The tomatoes are snapping out of the shock they got when I transplanted them.  I'm seeing that the new growth is deep green and healthy.  I might loose 5 or 6 plants but that's OK since I planted 40.

Last year I was attacked by the dreaded SVB's (Squash Vine Borers).  No sign of them this year yet but it's early still.  I noticed that I've got a couple of male squash flowers and 1 itty bitty fruit starting.

The onions are going gang busters.  The yellows and reds are sizing up nicely.  The white's are a bit smaller but they may still catch up.  Time will tell.

The luffas, cucumbers and casabanas are too small to bother photographing at this point and the potatoes keep growing through the straw so there's some hope for them.

It will be a fruitless season though as my fruit trees and berries are still young and growing.  I have absolutely NO APPLES on any of my 3 trees.  Pollination issue for sure, we blossomed so early this year.  Makes me wonder how orchards assure themselves of a crop every year.  Do they all ship in hives?  The peach tree had peaches on them but they're falling off.  Not sure what's up with that.  It is a very young tree.  I haven't researched growing peaches so it may be that I need to spray or something.  I'd rather the tree grow strong though than put out fruit at this point, so I'm OK with it.

The blueberries got zapped with the late frost we had so no fruit this year.  The raspberries look like they might think about giving me some fruit.  Still too early to tell.  The strawberry starts aren't doing much other than shooting out flowers which I dutifully snip off when I see them. 

I also planted marigold seeds and Dahlia tubers to try get some more color in the garden. 

Thanks for tagging along!  I expect that over the coming weeks the garden will hit it's stride.  Can't wait for my first summer squash and green beans.  Yum!