Friday, June 11, 2021

Things that are going right and things that are going wrong - the early version

I usually wait until the end of the season before I do my "Garden of Good and Evil" recap, but since I'm retired I have time to putter almost every day and obsess over the things that are giving me trouble.  The garden is growing great.  About 95% great.  Maybe 98%

The Tater Patch is growing by leaps and bounds

But the dreaded Flea Beetles found it. 
They are getting Neem every night for a bedtime snack
 
The Sweet Alyssum ground cover in the Bush Bean Bed is Beautiful.

Except this one 

The Penelope Peas went from blooming to pods in record time

The Grow Bag potatoes are even better than the tater patch
And the flea beetles haven't found them (yet)

No matter how careful I am seeding and watering carrots I always get huge bare spots
I just keep seeding until my space is full.

The Lima Beans are taking off and beginning to bud

There are some patches where the lima cotyledons came up but the growing point seemed damaged beyond saving.  I just ignored it and finally they are sending out leaves

Sweet Corn

The Cauliflowers are straining against their insect mesh.  
They didn't really do that last year.  They need to start flowering!

I always think I will not have cucumbers.
But then I always end up with too many cucumbers.
Again - I just keep seeding until I run out of seeds
I've been killing half a dozen cucumber beetles a day.  This is the first time in several years I've had more than one.  Seriously, I usually find ONE.

The cucumber beetles are also on the Cue Ball zucchini
But the zucchini hasn't noticed

Hmm... what do do with this big extra pot?
Spend too much $$ on a big bag of soil and plant old cantaloupe seed.

The tomato plants are doing awesome and almost ready to flower

This is my herb garden.
I always have more herbs tucked here and there but here I have
rosemary, sage and red and green basil.
Also calendula, snapdragons and four dahlia plants I didn't know what to do with
because somehow I have a gazillion orange Noordwijks Glorie dahlias and I'm tired of
them but don't want to throw any out.  So I booted them out of the Dahlia bed.

Remember over the winter I did herb cuttings?
The sage was awful leggy, but the rosemary did well.
The yellow arrows point to my parent plants that I overwintered
The three red arrows show the successful rosemary babies
The blue arrow shows one that decided to die this week. 
I do have another one elsewhere I might move

Instead of keeping my few leggy sages,
I was happy to find colored sage at the nursery and bought two of each.

I have a real thing for bicolored and tricolored sage but they are super hard to find.  I found FLATS of them and snapped them up so quick.... mid- April.  The nursery staff was sure I would kill them that early because our night time temps were so low but the cold frame did the trick.  I even brought them in a few nights.  I love my sage.


The End

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