how's it growin'? (mid-june 2011 part 2)

These are our four pumpkin plants.  The variety is a Japanese hybrid called Delica.  They are growing very well and taking over the neighboring beds.  We are considering growing pumpkins on trellis next year.

These pumpkins were set out early this year (early April).  The weather has been cooler and wetter than usual.  As a precaution, I sprayed diluted milk on the plants last week to prevent powdery mildew.  It was my first time doing it.  We'll see how well it works.

This is the biggest pumpkin on the plants right now.  I need to look up when to pick pumpkins.  We grew acorn squash last year, and we planted them pretty late.  We just harvested all the acorn squashes when the plants were killed by powdery mildew.

These are the three tomato plants I transplanted in mid-April.  We are only growing four heirloom varieties this year (black krim, beefsteak, green zebra, and aunt Ruby's German green), two plants each.

zebra green

aunt ruby's german green

black krim

beefsteak

There are plenty of green tomatoes right now.  The plants will provide us with a lot more than we can eat.  I can't wait to pick our first ripe tomato.

Edamame (soybean) is not  an "economical" crop in terms of the space and time they take and the output they give.  I insist on growing them every year because they are so much better than the frozen ones at stores.  We never grow enough to freeze.  Most of the time, we cook them right after they are picked.

These are butterbean edamame.  They are grown from seeds we saved last year.  We also sowed another variety, beer friend, in another bed.  The germination rate for beer friend was really low (4 out of 21 seeds).  The seeds were purchased from Kitazawa.  All of the other seeds we purchased from Kitazawa germinated well, though.  We re-sowed some more butterbean seeds instead.

Of course not everything is dainty and sweet in the garden.  Meet the potatoes.  They are sad looking and full of holes.  Some of them are yellowing and dying.  They didn't get enough water for a period of time and where they are doesn't get full sun.  Perhaps these are the reasons they are not growing well.  They don't look like they have blight.

Potatoes weren't part of the plan this year.  We planted them because we had a bag of sprouted supermarket potatoes.  The way I look at it is that any potatoes we get out of them are bonuses (or so I tell myself).

I won't make my "report" any lengthier.  I'll try to show our other plants next time.

start of the growing season

This is our fourth season growing here.  There isn't much going on in the garden at the moment.  Not much edible anyways.  But, we have plenty of weeds.  We always neglect the garden during winter.  Rain plus weed seeds equal...



GASP... unsightly!  I know.  We tried mulching with wood chips, but we couldn't finish covering the whole garden all at once.  So, one side gets covered, weeds on the other side go to seed.  Weed seeds fall on wood chips... it's a vicious cycle.  Hopefully we can find better ways to deal with our weed problem.

Right now, we are weeding as we plant.  We are kind of procrastinators, and we didn't usually plant things out this early.   But, we are trying to change that this year.  Yesterday, I transplanted our Japanese Pumpkins that we start from seed.  It feels early to set out anything in the squash family, and the weather is cooler than usual, but we are going to give it a try anyways.  Today, I sowed 3 different kinds of bean seeds (Yard Long, Frosty Lima, and Kentucky Wonder).

  

In the past, we mostly purchased our plants or directly sowed seeds into the ground.  This year, we finally set up growing lights and started tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, melons, squashes, and some other seeds indoors.  Most of the seedlings look like they are on schedule.  The peppers, however, are taking their sweet time.  We'll probably have to buy a few pepper plants in the store first.