Weekly Update - June 8, 2015

The excessive rain has destroyed the plan.  We did not have the ability to craft the different raised beds we wanted.  We are just trying to get the plants into the ground so they do not get root bound and die on the porch.  When the rain let up for several days this week allowing the soil to dry enough to plan, so we got up early Sunday morning to go out to the Garden and plant the herbs.


We left the south side of the garden for herbs when planting last week. We checked the weather when we got up at 6 am and it said the rain was going in but not until 10 AM, so we loaded up the plants and went over getting to the garden around 6:45 AM.

We had to remove the weeds from the garden space as we did not weed this section previously.  We used the soil twister to pull out the larger weeds and loosen them so they could be easily raked out.  It was not that time consuming.

Since I want to be able to lift out some of herbs from the garden at the end of the season, I decided to bury plastic containers and place the plants inside.  They can grow in the container, yet still be removed at the end of the year, reducing the root shock which killed the herbs I removed from the garden last year.

I used plastic cat litter containers.  They are thin flexible plastic, easily cut with a box cutter.  We made them deep for all but the thyme plants which we cut the container slight more shallow for.  We cut holes in the bottom for drainage.

I then dug out the dirt in various holes slightly larger but not deeper than the containers.

Placing the container in the ground I packed dirt around it, then filled it part way and added the plants.  We added water before and after plating the plants.

The spaces we planted back in May had a fair amount of weeds, that were in some cases taller than the plants.  It had been two weeks since we had been there, so this was to be expected.

The excessive rain was not loved by all the plants and resulted in one plant death. These are the cucumber plants.  I have yet to plant any bean seeds, but I will take care of that this week.

 The peppers are doing okay, but the hot peppers that had a few peppers forming have lost those peppers, probably again a product of the extra rain.

Hot pepper with damaged fruit

Weekly update - August 17

This week we continued to weed and harvest and water a bit, but there has been plenty of rain here recently, almost too much.  Everything is still looking very green and the tomatoes are ripening as we have had some warmer nights.

Looking to the east

Things are still very contained, even the herbs are staying somewhat separated from each other.

Looking to the west

The Kohlrabi I used to replace the lettuce is growing well.  If the small bugs that are eating the leaves on everything don't get tot them they should do rather well and give me a late September root crop.  Since we never planted carrots because we ran out of room this will be a nice item to go with the Celery root (Celeriac) that will mature around the same time.

The Zinnias were the happiest of plants int he garden this week.  As you can see they are covered with blooms.

The Calendula that I planted from seed along the front edge of the garden late in the season has come up well and is going into continuous bloom mode.  As soon as I clip off a flower others come to take there place.  This mix has two shades of lowers An orange that is like a pumpkin color and a red and yellow that looks almost like a straw flower.  So far not a single yellow bloom in the bunch.

I have so many calendula about to pop that I think I will need to plan to use them this fall in something special at the Backyard Patch.

The dwarf sunflowers are flowering and the heads are getting heavy and turning toward the ground.

My sunflowers are only about 2 feet tall.  But a few of the other gardeners in the community patch has full-sized sunflowers like these beauties.

There are signs of trouble in the garden however. Here is the climbing burpless cucumber vine and you can see the bug holes in the leaves and the dried and discolored leaves on the plant.  I am not sure if it is vertasiliam wilt, which I know is in the soil or the fungus from the potato bugs that I know have been plaguing these plants since they got about 2 inches tall.  Either way the bugs and diseases are winning.

Musk Melon

A mold called powdery mildew, has also formed on all the squash plants including the acorn squash and the zucchini.

After the great harvest we had previously the plant now struggles to produce one zucchini at a time.

My melon which was slow to germinate and slow to prosper is covered with this same powdery mildew.

Acorn Squash also has yellowing and drying leaves

Zucchini

 The herbs, however, are doing very well.  The thyme is in need of harvesting, but I forgot the paper bags, so I will do it next time I visit. The Dill and fennel have already started to produce seed.  I have decided to let them go to seed as I have other plants so I can save the seed for next year as I will lose all these plants at the end of the season when the community garden shuts down. Even after harvesting them last week they have grown and filled back in like they were hardly cut.

Silver thyme

Looking to the east (rather bright because of sun angle at 8 PM)

Looking to the west Mint int he foreground trimmed back so you can see the tri color sage.

In the next few weeks I will harvest these again, allowing some of the calendula as well as the bronze fennel go to seed and perhaps the oregano and savory as well so I can save the seed from those plants which did very well this season.