Here's a picture of the full garden, from one corner to another. You can see obvious rows on parts of it, and what looks like a wide open space in the center. That should begin to form more obvious rows over the next few weeks, both as plants grow and fill out, and as I remove the weeds. The next 5 pictures are views down the rows, and what they are.
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| The Vines (Pumpkin, Cucumber, Watermelon, Cantaloupe) |
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| The Peppers (Hot peppers and Bell peppers) |
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| The Tomatoes |
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| The Corn and Sunflowers |
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| The Squash |
Okay, so now let's take a closer look at each one. First, we'll start with the vines. Pumpkin, Cucumber, Watermelon, and Cantaloupe are all growing SO well. There are still a few weeds between them, but the vines themselves are taking over them and using them to spread out, so I only want to pull the ones with thorns. I didn't really think much about spacing when I planted these apparently, because they are creeping into each other's rows, and I foresee swimming through vines and discovering cucumbers in the pumpkin row and cantaloupe in the watermelon row... but in the end, they're all so healthy that no matter how I have to harvest them, they do seem to be growing well.
Note to self: Next year, plant the cucumber on an outer row, since they will be harvested much more often.
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| Cucumber |
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| Pumpkin |
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| Watermelon |
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| Cantaloupe |
Then we move on to the peppers. I'm not sure how I ended up with four rows of them, but that's what I have. I know there are assorted bell peppers, and I believe I also have Habanero, Banana Peppers, and a Hot mix. Honestly, I don't remember. The pepper plants are still much smaller than the other plants in the garden, as they were last year as well. Part of this is because the pepper rows are riddled with weeds (I can't say that 5 times fast) and part of it is our nightly visitor.
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| I'll get you, you pesky wabbit! (See the rabbit tracks in the mud?) |
However, the the plants themselves do seem healthy and a very pretty shade of green, even if they are small. It's still only May, they have plenty of time to grow up and start producing yummy peppers.
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| Bigger pepper plants (8 inches tall) |
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| Small pepper plants (4 inches tall) |
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| Pretty and healthy Tomato plant |
Next in line, we have the tomatoes. There are two rows, although it's hard to tell since the squash plants are spreading into them. They are still pretty small as well, some of them are about a foot tall right now, but I will say the same thing I did about the peppers. They have plenty of time still to grow. Part of the problem is our nightly visitor, a rabbit who comes and eats their leaves. Now, I don't know if it's just one rabbit or multiple bunnies sneaking into the garden, but they're going to stop pretty quickly. A few days ago my dog was prancing around the yard showing off a brand new cottontail she had caught (and killed).
Squash! This is the section that you are just not going to believe.
The squash TOOK OFF for me this year. I don't know what I was thinking, planting two full rows of it. I think my thought process was something like, "I should probably use up all these seeds, otherwise it will have been a waste of money. Oops, I'm out of space in this row. Oh well, I'll just make another." Whatever brought it on, I now have two rows of overflowing, waist-high squash plants.
The picture on the left here is a top view of the squash. This is what you actually see when you look at it. The picture on the right is when you move the leaves aside and look at the base of the plant. Large orange flowers and lots of growing veggies!
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| This is what you will find on every single squash plant, in both rows. Flower buds and an abundance of tiny veggies. They will be large enough to pick within a week. |
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| Hm. This one is the perfect size to be picked now. I'll give it another day though, since I already have 6 squash in my kitchen that I have yet to do anything with. It's just not fun eating squash with dinner every night in a week, you know? |
The corn is the furthest along in the garden, mainly because they survived from the initial planting, along with the sunflowers, making them a few weeks older than everything else. The entire row has an average of 2-3 ears of corn forming on every stalk.
The Sunflowers are so much fun to grow. I love how tall they get, and how big and beautiful the flowers are. Right now, I have Sunflowers in all different stages.
This sunflower in particular is one I'm paying very close attention to. I honestly don't see that it will survive, bloom, or produce any flowers or seeds... but I really hope that it does, because it will be one amazing sight to see.
I have nicknamed it "Gemini."
You can see in this picture that this one sunflower stalk has split off into two sections, and each section is growing it's own flower. That's rare enough as it is, having two flowers on one plant.
Here's where it gets even more rare. Not only are there two flowers on the stalk, but each flower is actually TWO flower buds, sharing the same stem. It's kind of hard to tell in the picture, but on the stem I'm holding up, there is one head on the left and one head on the right (if you look at the direction the small pointy green leaves are aiming, it helps. They surround each flower head).
If you look a bit more closely lower down on the stalk you can see that it appears to be two plants that are fused together. Or perhaps, one that never fully seperated.
My theory is that it's a genetic defect in the plant cells that is doubling everything. They are forming two of everything, but never seperating. Two main stalks, not seperated. Two flower stems, two flower buds on each stem, two leaves on opposite sides when on a typical sunflower plant there would be only one... I love when nature makes a mistake, because often times it turns out to be even more beautiful than the normal ones. I really hope Gemini blooms.
I tried to make this picture extra large so you can see, but this is how my watering system is set up. On the far side, there are two sprinklers mounted up on posts. There are also two more on the near side, but one of them is too far to the left and out of view. The sprinklers are each aimed at the garden and set to spray 180 degrees (that's a half circle). That means each quarter of the garden has it's own sprinkler. The advantage to having it set up this way is that there is only two hoses running through the veggies, I don't have to worry about moving sprinklers and adjusting them so they reach everything, and they are tall enough to spray over the top of everything, so nothing blocks the spray from reaching other plants. Due to water pressure we can only run two sprinklers at a time, but it's really not a big deal to switch them, since all four are connected to a single connector with easy to turn knobs for each hose.
As if this isn't already a long enough post... there is still more! You see, I can't have just planted the entire garden twice and have it all go flawlessly. There have been a few... "oops" plants. For example...
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| The cucumbers that had been planted previously have sprouted and are growing in their own row, running perpendicular to the current layout of the garden, and growing over the ends of the tomato and pepper rows. |
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| At the edge of the tilled land, runs an entire row of cantaloupe. All growing with pretty yellow flowers blossoming all over the place. |
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| A single HUGE pumpkin plant, fondly referred to as "daddy pumpkin". Have I mentioned he's HUGE?! |
We're almost done here, but now I want to show you the fruits of my labor. Literally. I should mention, I'm not much into sports, but to give you some idea of the size of these melons, I used ball sizes.
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| Cantaloupe a bit larger than the size of a softball. |
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| Cantaloupe the size of a baseball. |
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| Cantaloupe the size of a tennis ball. |
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| Cantaloupe the size of a marble. ...Is that not a sport? It should be. There are lots of these little ones scattered throughout the plants. |
Daddy Pumpkin has been growing balls too. I mean, pumpkins. Is a pumpkin a vegetable? Anyways, The one on the left is the size of a softball, and the one on the right is already nearly the size of a bowling ball. I like that it's starting to have orange shades to it! That's so exciting.
And we will end this evening off with the smaller experimental outgrowth of the garden, the herbs. I didn't have anywhere in the ground I could plant them and still be able to distinguish exactly what was what (considering a lot of herbs look coincidentally like the weeds) and I also didn't have any small peat pots, so instead I used some styrofoam cups I had in the kitchen, filled them with freshly tilled soil from the garden, and planted some seeds in each cup, writing what I planted on the outside. I have two cups each of chives, lavender, parsley, basil, oregano, catnip (for my kitties), cilantro, sage, and rosemary. The rosemary didn't actually seem to do anything... there are two small plants growing in one of the rosemary cups but sadly I think they are just weeds. I don't have the heart to toss them and then later find out that was in fact rosemary, so I may be taking care and love to a common nuisance plant that I would have otherwise pulled up by the roots. Time will tell. In the meantime though, I'm getting them accustomed to full sunlight, a few hours at a time during the day, so I can transplant them to a raised bed I have in the back yard.
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| From left to right: chives, lavender, catnip, rosemary, sage, parsley, basil, oregano, cilantro. |
Well, I think that has been MORE than enough this update. Hopefully the next time you see my garden, I can show you larger peppers and tomatoes, and harvested fruits and veggies! =)
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