Garden Update - May 2009

As our garden expands, there are getting to be more pictures per garden update. This leads to garden updates becoming a bit tedious for me if I have to describe every single picture. So I will only describe the ones that have something notable, and if you have questions or comments on anything, please leave a comment.

I think we have at least 2 Eastern fence lizards and at least one variety of skink that like to hang around our yard. This is what's known as A Very Good Thing (tm). I couldn't spot any of them for pictures, but felt compelled to report it.


Left to right: bee balm, sage, lavender, yarrow, thyme, stevia (which survived the winter, and a total cut back and two uprootings, only one of which was purposeful), peppermint, oregano, thyme, blueberry. And a grapevine that I am trying to convince to grow along the fence.



Jericho lettuce (hopefully tolerant of Southern climate, considering it was developed in Israel) and American Flag leeks being shaded by our newer non-dwarf fig tree.

Peas, which seem to be greatly enjoying square foot gardening. In turn, the aphids are greatly enjoying the peas. Hopefully more ladybugs will come along and enjoy the aphids. I am using row covers to provide shade for the Winter Density lettuce.

We started these lettuce from seed ourselves. Can you believe they look so great? We had our first harvest yesterday and it was very good. Great texture and it was nice to eat something so freshly killed.


Potatoes in the garbage. I am a bit concerned about the drainage, as it doesn't seem like the garbage cans are draining well enough.

Boring picture of our fifth bed, which is beyond the backyard fence in no-man's-land. Four winter squashes, which Harmony's terrible swift sword will reduce to two. Also along the top row are 4 Korean melon seedlings, which will also be reduced to two. In the two middle horizontal rows, we have corn, 4 per square. So far I have counted 24 germinations out of 32 sowed corn thingies. We will soon be sowing corn in the bottom two horizontal rows as well.

Our green onions have flowered. (Should we not have let this happen?) I included this picture because in the front and center is one of our blackberry vines. We ordered blackberries a while ago, then sort of forgot about them and left them in the packaging for waaaay longer than we should have. Finally we decided that we should at least give them a chance, even though nothing might happen. As it turns out, two of three are looking like they will make it. This is probably a horrible place for them, but we really didn't have any suitable place to put them. Maybe I can train them to grow along the fence or make another trellis for them.

Does anyone want some tomato seedlings? We don't guarantee that they will do well, since they have been in the pots for longer than we'd like. We have no place to put them and don't want to throw them in the compost. They are totally free, you just have to come get them, or you can invite us over for dinner, or we can bring them to church (for all one of you readers who attends with us). However, the bottom two are not up for grabs. Those are doing so well and we always intended to keep those ;)