Garden Attempts by Novices - Take 20
After 6 inches of rain, I thought for sure our garden would be washed away! At least the onions, anyway. In fact, the onions are there and do need some extra soil, which I will go them today, but otherwise it was looking good!
The most exciting thing? This progression of photos...
This is our garden a few weeks ago. See where #1 arrow is pointing? That is our lot neighbor to the south. In fact, there is no lot neighbor there. No one has ever touched the site. Can you see all the tall grasses in their lot? The height of their tall grasses was up to 4', #2 arrow, just a couple days ago. Needless to say, it was heavily shading our crops on the south side of out lot.
This is the very much welcomed sight we got once we came to the garden on Monday after our 6 inches of rain. Hooray! It was amazing the difference it made on our plants! The bummer part was where the arrow is pointing, they did not chop down the grasses and weeds growing directly next to the fence (making it so you still can't even see our lot!). Thankfully though, when we put in our fencing we put it 6" inside the lot markers so the kids and I all took liberties and walked in the neighbor's lot (generally a no-no but this was a special case and it had not been prepped yet.) and yanked out all the grasses next to our fence. It was quite the chore but since the weeds were so big and huge we were able to rip the whole root out easily.
This shows you our hard labors. Yes, there are still some grasses in "their" lot that were outside our 6" buffer that I did not feel right about pulling, but the ones that were inside our boundary lines are g-o-n-e gone! And look at those happy beans and edamame! They doubled in size since the rains!
Other happy news...
Our cherry tomatoes are really going for red and lo and behold a green pepper! Hooray! He's as small as the cherry tomatoes, but how exciting! I fed our tomato plants a helping of Epsom today, just for good measure. We'll see how that works to ripen up all the green ones just sitting around, doing nothing!
Random things to note...
1.) Watering is still boring BUT being as hot as it is, it is a welcome wetness that the kids are now liking a lot more. Yes, still no wagon, but we are managing since we are getting lots of rain these days. I must admit, I like the rain but hate the storms. Storms mean friends' basements flood and lightning striking work towers, extra work for a lot of people which is no fun. Just rain means happy plants and less work for us.
2.) Yummy peas! We have about harvested all our peas. My were they yummy! I made them in just about every fashion and they were so good. My favorite was putting them in this simple shrimp stir fry, yummy! I will so do the same kind of peas next year, hands down!
How did you know when to harvest your broccoli?? Ours wasn't very big, so we didn't even think about harvesting it, but little yellow flowers bloomed on all of them. We still have a few plants that just have a little tiny sprout of broccoli, so there might still be hope. Maybe you can enlighten me!!
Not saying that I know everything, but, the broccoli plants we grew did not look like what you find in the store. They were definitely not as big or not as dark green. We had 2 brands of broccoli plants, one type got to an overall diameter of 5" and I thought for sure it would get bigger but after we lost our first head I knew that "brand only got 5" across. Another type we had go to 7" across and it was just tha t type. (A lot neighbor of ours had theirs get to bigger than grocery store sizes! Like 9" or more across!) What I would do is take note of how far across they were in diameter right before they bolted into yellow flowers. Then, when the other ones start getting around that size check them every day. You can honestly pick them at anytime, but if you want the most veggie, then eye them till they look the right size and could possibly start to pull away from each other, the pulling away is normally something they do right before bolting. Don't forget too that if you cut off even the yellow flowered head just under the head you will get more broccoli just they will be little heads anywhere from 1" to 3" in diameter. I hope that helps! Love you Blakely!