My garden is finally doing it's thing - growing! After thinking I had cutworm, then doh! realizing it was really a slug problem I took care of it just in time for the little winged critters to attack my leaves. I remembered I had diatomaceous earth from last year and have been dusting the plants. This has been working marvelously. I have realized that most veggie gardens are not going to have perfectly green lush leaves. There will be holey leaves, some yellowish or brown leaves to pick off and it's just a fact of life when it comes to gardening. I won't tell you how many plants I plucked and chucked as a newbie gardener last year thinking they would not survive. Uh huh. I guess if everything is a learning experience I'm learning a lot. Don't know what will stick but I'm learning.
First the beautiful blueberries. They were just turning purple when I took this photo but by today we had a good handful of blue ones. I sent the boys out this morning to get their fill early because there's been a handful of birds body rushing the bushes despite the hanging CDs to deter them. So we'll beat them to the punch each morning for the ripe berries. I hope to go stock up on berries at the farmer's market too. More freezing, a good batch of jam and who knows what else.
One of the pepper plants wearing its diatomaceous armor. If you look right in the middle of it you'll see a teeny little pepper! A sight to behold considering last year I never even got the pepper plants to germinate. I planted yellow, red, cubanelle and lots of them. I love peppers and my oldest eats them raw until his belly pops out.
Tomatoes! Please forgive all the exclamation marks this post but *sniff* my little halfbaked dream of putting up tomatoes this year might actually happen. Plus I'll get my fill of fried green tomatoes, green tomatoes in grilled cheese sandwiches and chopped green tomatoes on my chili. One teeny little tomato coming in and plenty of tomato blossoms with promise of more fruit.
The herbs are doing well. The rosemary is still alive, the oregano is growing all over the place, mint is growing like well, a weed and I used the first bit of thyme this week for dinner. I'm looking forward to some tall lavender spikes to try my hand at lavender wands.
But the children's garden - oh my. Drop dead gorgeous, lush even with the heat and filled with bounty.
A zucchini blossom and many more to come. I gave up on growing some in my garden figuring the kids had thrown enough seed in theirs to guarantee at least one plant and I'm just giddy with joy at seeing the blossoms come in. I've also seen plenty of bees which means I won't have to hand pollinate.
I definitely think that the cantaloupe vine is the diva of the garden. I love how in charge that vine is, growing practically a foot each night, spreading out all over the place and unfurling these beautiful leaves, blooms and curlycues.
Marigolds, the workhorses of our garden. My mom taught the boys to break open the blooms and toss the seeds back into the soil. They love this so much we have constant blooms.
This little melon vine has me totally on the edge of my seat. I have no idea what variety it is from the seeds thrown in that container but if it's the watermelon, I'm going to be overjoyed.
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