"Getting rid of everything that doesn’t matter allows you to remember who you are. Simplicity doesn’t change who you are, it brings you back to who you are."

Monday, May 14, 2012

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!

10 comments:

  1. We just had our "bee" guy deliver the hives for the summer--he said NO ONE will be getting fruit in Michigan this year. We had a terrible warm up in March, lots of our normal freezes after...
    Bees can only do so much. Mother Nature has certainly done a number this year!

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  2. Why are you snipping off the strawberry flowers? They need to be pollinated to produce the fruit...?

    Now I'm confused?

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  3. Your onions look fantastic! Looks like you'll have a great harvest!

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  4. Hey Dani..I just put the strawberries in this April. The booklet says not to let them fruit this year at all (so the plant gets established) and to pinch the flowers off.

    Sorry didn't mean to confuse you!

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  5. I think we had a pollination issue this year also; NO apples, NO cherries and only one or two nectarines.

    Hope those bugger Evil Squash Bugs stay away!

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  6. We have a rented hive in our orchard this year for pollination but with the crazy wacky weather, even the bees couldn't help all the trees. Some varieties that are more 'fragile' just couldn't hang when they blossomed too early and then we had a cold snap. :/

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  7. Tami your garden looks great! Good for you on snipping those strawberries...you should get a bumper crop next season. I tried an experiment year before last...let 1/2 go and snipped the other half...the snipped had wonderful strawberries the following season...the others: nada! I gotta' tell ya' having bees in the garden/fruit orchard has made a world difference in fruit production...it amazes me!

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  8. Looks like it's all coming together and can't believe how huge your onions are!

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  9. Your garden is doing much better then ours. Still waiting to see some growth here. At the rate we are going we have anything to harvest till the end of summer. Keep the faith, yours will be bursting at the seems here before too long.

    @ 3Beeze Homestead

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  10. Tami, it looks great! I am so far behind in my garden. Every time I plan on a planting day it rains! And the weeds! Your's is an inspiration.

    It took several years for my apples to start to bear. My peaches and almond do the same as yours; I'm assuming it's self-pruning!

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