Our Garden July 26, 2016

Our Garden 

July 26, 2016

This is the pile of dirt I've been collecting for a new raised-bed.  Dh hasn't put the frame up yet, but I planted bunches of marigold flowers that had taken over our "tomato/celery/kale bed."  So far, they are all accepted the move.

Our Swiss Chard is coming along.  The volunteer acorn squase keep growing leaves that grow over the chard, and every few days I have to come and cut off those leaves to maintain their light exposure.

Speaking of acorn squash---here is our first one!  

We are still harvesting a lot of lettuce's for our salads, but I've had to buy some at the store as well... I should have bought a LOT more lettuce plants/seeds.  Michele Z. said the lettuce seeds I planted around June 30th wouldn't grow--but, they are!  She also said in August I could plant more (new) lettuce seeds and they would grow for our fall eating.  I better get on that!  August is about here!

These are the June 30th seed crop...the light green lettuce...doing great!

I'm showing you the bald spots...where our kohlrabi use to be, but have been harvested already.  Now we just have some tomato plants in that back spot--which we are eating now.

This is the first week of red tomatoes for Dh's salad!

Our broccolli is coming along...slowly!

This bed is only peppers--maybe 3-4 different kinds of peppers.  Dh has been getting some peppers in his salads for 2-3 weeks now, but I did take some small ones at first.

The 'tomato/celery/kale' garden bed is still over-stuffed; even though I removed gobs of marigold plants!  At least some of the celery and kale can breath a bit better now.  I should probably remove some more marigolds...I filled quite a few pots, as well as the 'to-be' raised bed.

Here are the seven pots I've filled with the excess marigolds!  They all seem to be accepting the move as well. 

You can actually see the dirt, from my removal of the marigolds.  The celery seems like it is starting it's decline---I seem to have missed the sweet spot of prime eating.  It is still okay, but not as tender as I hoped.  You can also see the kale--last weekend I mixed up a LOT of kale chips, which were very good and repeatable.  

Here is our messy herb/lettuce/marigold bed.  We used some lettuce seed packets from our library's seed share, but some of the lettuce had a bitter taste that I wasn't sure about.  There is still some spinach and good lettuce coming up in there, but I need to weed out that weird lettuce soon.  I think I'll plant some new lettuce there.  I'd like to transplant some of those over-zealous marigolds out of the bed, so I can use more space for eat-able foods.  I haven't had too much trouble with bugs, which was WHY I had planted so much marigold!

Our precious chickens have wandered into our garden a few times this week, and I had to chase them out.  They haven't been much a problem...luckily!

The chickens are always wandering around the outside fence of the garden.  I wrapped a metal cage around my grape plant that is planted on the outside of the fence, and they leave it alone.  I don't mind them pecking at the outside leaves.

The profile pix of the tomato plants...really tall!

Why am I sharing this well lid?  I found five baby rabbits in a little hoe there this week.  I kept putting back one wild baby (2x) this week.  When a storm was coming I got out one of my umbrella to shield the nest; but apparently the rabbit mom didn't like the umbrella and moved the babies by the morning.

Now you know why I have a huge umbrella in my yard!  I've moved it around now that the bunnies are gone.  I guess I could mow again--- I had such a great reason not to mow--I was just "protecting" those bunnies!  But, now I don't know where those cute bunnies are and am afraid of finding them the wrong way.

This little side garden is doing okay too.  I'm still getting a little bit of lettuce, but which it was more.  The black raspberry plant we brought from Indiana has some berries getting close to ripping.  

  

A Painted Lady butterfly found our ragged cone-flower.  This week I have seen so many butterflies---especially those yellow Tiger Swallow-tale butterfly.

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