Author: bekki

The black raspberries are pretty much finished. The red raspberries will probably be done producing this week.

I must admit that I’d hoped we would have a longer season of summer berries, enabling me to can some for use over the winter, but no such joy.
Perhaps once we get the plants on trellises, they’ll produce a higher yield.

The corn is verging on 7-foot tall where it’s had full sun. The corn nearer the edge, and in the shade is a smaller 4-5 foot tall.

The salad (arugula mainly) is still doing very well. The actual lettuce has been very disappointing.
I’m thinking some of it has to do with a groundhog or two that we’re being pestered by.

Still no topsoil.
The sweet potatoes out on the porch in pots are faring ok… but a bunch of melons that we’d planted in trays are not doing so well.

The asparagus that we started from seed is really concerning me, as the stalks are very thin and spindly, and they keep falling over.
They’ll be thicker next year, but we have to get them through this one first.

We should have a few more tomatoes this week, with any luck.
There are radishes that I can see in the garden that should be good to pick this week too.

I did my first picking of beans (quite a large crop, actually!!) last week, and a handful of garden peas too.

We have a couple peppers that are ready to pick.
The radishes are just about ready to pick.

So much is going on.
Don’t ask me to list it all.

Still waiting on top soil (SOOOOO frustrating). Ended up having to plant the sweet potato slips that were left over into pots on the porch just to keep them alive.

Nearly got the last of the regular potatoes planted, but some of them have been surprisingly slow to grow, so rather than planting the slips and having soil/rain suffocate them, I’ve got them in little pots on the porch.

The herb bed is doing very well, though there are still some varieties that haven’t even shown their faces yet… I’m a bit bummed about that.
The arugula is producing amazingly, however, so I’m enjoying delightful salads as present (albeit with store-bought tomatoes).

We picked our first two tomatoes last week. They were from plants that our friend Rod had given to us..

The berry bushes are in full swing. We’ve been picking those for probably 2 weeks now.
I filled up around 1 quart this morning.

I was VERY disappointed with the strawberries that we got.
They only produced for a couple of weeks; the strawberries were small, not overly sweet.

Last update was that the tomatoes had died.
Fortunately, however, we had loads that had grown on their own from last year’s seeds which had fallen into the ground and sat out the winter.

They were transplanted into trays to make way for additional raised beds, and were subsequently transplanted into their own raised beds around a week ago, where they are doing beautifully.

On the 13th, we planted several trays of summer melons, various organic peppers, some more tomatoes. We also planted the asparagus from seed, and some more beans and peas directly into a bed of their own.
Took about 7-10 days for the peppers to sprout (although some of the ‘Chinese Giant Peppers’ are only just now starting to sprout), 3-5 for the melons, and the beans and peas seemed to come up in a day or two.

We planted all of the root veggies (except for the potatoes) on the 16th and 17th, and the carrots are in full sprouting glory. (Took about a week for those)

I noticed this morning that some of the asparagus is as much as 2″ tall, with most more around 1″.

We went out of town this past weekend to attend a wedding.
When we came back, the tomatoes that I planted (and I planted quite a lot of them!) had died.

Sigh.

They were watered well, the temperatures were warm while we were gone … so I’ve no idea how/why.

Perhaps it’s just another indication of the need to start tomatoes inside with grow-lights, so that they are bigger by the time we transplant them.

Transplanted most of the melons on Friday night, and started transplanting the peppers, basil, and tomatoes yesterday afternoon.
I was worried that the spaghetti squash (which was started by mistake with the summer squash back in April) might die, as the stems were looking a bit spindly, but as of today, they appear to be reviving.

It wasn’t until Frank accidentally threw some 10-yr old Spanish cherimoya seeds down the drain, that I actually remembered what they were called, and went online to see if I could fine some replacements.
www.tradewindsfruit.com was the site that I ended buying from, and in addition to two varieties of Cherimoya/Custard Apple that I bought, I also got some mini kiwis, dwarf papays, pawpaw, black Hungarian peppers, and brown (not golden) flax.

The lables on the pawpaw and cherimoya said that it can take up to 6 months for the seeds to germinate!
6 months!!!

Hopefully by following the directiosn on these pages, I’ll get by with simply a 1-month germination!
http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/pawpaw/ppg.htm
http://www.ehow.com/how_8463019_grow-cherimoya-seed.html
We planted the herb bed last night: 29 varieties – some culinary, some medicinal, and along with sowing the next month’s lettuce seeds, I also transplanted the lettuce that came up spontaneously from last year’s seeds which fell into the soil.
Cannot wait to start harvesting.

The winter squash which we planted two weekends ago is doing very well. A few inches tall, and just starting to get their 2nd leaves – so I should be able to to transplant those within the week.

One thing very apparent is that the Summer squash which was planted in May is pretty much as far along as those planted in April. So unless we have some heat-assisted mode of growing, I don’t see that we should plant any squash in April.

Our corn is knee-high.
Our beans have sent runners up to the top of the 3′ trellis.
The peas are a bit slower to take off, it seems, but they’re mostly around the 1-foot mark.

I have 108 potato sprouts in the greenhouse – most of the ones that I planted lst month (2/3s) haven’t broken the surface at all. We had a lot of heavy rain, so I’m thinking that the soil around the side (I’d dug down to allow the soil to be hilled as they grew) flodded back into the pits and stopped them from growing.
I needed to grow 144 potato plants… hopefully I can still make that happen.

Next weekend is going to be CRAZY.
We have around 600-650 of each peas and beans to plant …along with melons and peppers to make up for the ones that died out of the April planting.

Wow. What a wet spring!

The good side is that the ground is very well nourished … the bad side is that the beds that I really had hoped would be well in by now are not.
We have a measly 5 beds out of 36 filled and in place.

Lettuce planted into trays did VERY poorly. 95% of the seedlings died.
Frank seemed to think that maybe they were planted too close to the surface.

He planted some directly into the soil infront of the house, and it’s thriving.

As of now, the corn is all planted (in the beds), along with 1/3 of the beans and garden peas, and all of the sugar snap peas.
Some of the melons and courgettes will go around the outside of the beds shortly to allow for a “Three Sisters” type companion planting, and the rest will be planted with other companions in other beds.