The long over-due garden post

I'll admit that I have been terrible about blogging this year. And since this had mostly been a garden blog I feel that I have dropped the ball on up-dates especially since my garden looks like this...

June 29

Compared to last year, I would say that the garden looks a lot neater with the raised beds and mulching around them. The mounds worked great and produced a lot of veggies. But, I lost some soil (erosion) and the mounds lost shape by fall.

May 18th

I started with three beds, one from last fall that I added after clearing the corn and green bean plants and two that I purchased this year. The beds are Greenes Fence 4'x8' cedar beds that I got from Home Depot. They were super easy to put build and install. I definitely recommend them for anyone who wants raised beds but doesn't want to put in too much though into how to build them.

June 16

This year, I planted tomatoes (Roma, yellow slicing, red cherry and yellow cherry tomatoes), basil, Thai hot peppers, spaghetti squash,  zucchini, cucumber, green beans, peas, butternut squash, radish, parsley, green onion, spinach, lettuce, and cilantro. It's a lot. No lie. But, I'm excited about the possibilities.

Success from the garden :-)

Tomato and Pepper Plants

Squash, beans, and corn plants

My first try at gardening has been going pretty well. The plants are full and lush and going pretty strong, in spite of the small battles with early blight, slugs, and other pests. I've been getting a decent little harvest - especially from my tomato plants.

Tomatoes, beens, and zucchini squash

Some of the tomatoes are half the size of my niece's head! And there's more to come.

While I haven't seen too many ears of corn on my plants, there are a couple almost ready to pick. Also, I have a bunch of plum tomatoes and heirlooms that just need to ripen. I'm going to have to get a bit creative with tomatoes. I've already used a few in a grilled chicken bruschetta and will be using some in a tomato tart. A fresh tomato salsa might have to be on the list too. I'll try to have the camera out to snap a few photos of my tomato creations.

Plum tomato plants surrounded by wild flowers.

The experimental garden in front of my sidewalk, where the azaleas used to be, has been successful for the plum tomatoes. There are a few green bean plants that have produced a handful of green beans. However, the squash has not done very well. I think it's because they are shaded and squash plants are fiends for sunlight.  Oh well. 

With the success of the garden, I'm already thinking of what I can do for a fall garden. Looking around the web, I think I'll soon start some beds with more green beans, carrots, lettuce, and maybe some kale.

Progress and set backs

Tomatoes and peppers, early last week. 

 

Early last week, I was able to get out to the garden and take a couple photos on its progress. This was after I had realized that I had neglected my garden for a couple of weeks and had let weeds grow all over the walk ways and sides of the beds. I had also found a few slugs (possible suspects for the near death of one of my bean plants and numerous squash flowers) that were also removed from the garden. But after all the unwanted vegetation was removed I was able to see that there had been some progress in veggie production

Here are a few specimens from the garden.

Beans coming soon!

Romas - starting to come in. 

First successful bell pepper

First tomato!

Zucchini... no looking so good

But, not all has been a success. I've already had to prematurely remove two peppers and a couple of zucchinis because they were infected with something. There were soft spots on them and I removed them in hopes that the infection would not spread. 

Erly blight on tomato plant *sad face*

Tomatoes as of this morning

It has also been raining here plenty, which is both a blessing and a curse. I haven't had to spend time in the morning making sure that my plants have had a healthy dose of agua before the heat of the day; however, high humidity and heat make for ideal conditions for fungal growth. And lo and behold... the blight has already beseiged my indeterminate tomato plants! I've gone through and picked off infected leaves and sprayed with a copper based fungicide. Only time will tell if I get more than one tomato from all four plants. I've seen some signs of it on my Romas, but I'm hoping that early enough treatment will help stem the spread. Since this is my first time growing tomatoes, I'll admit that I had not thoroughly read into growing tomatoes beyond planing them pretty deep into the ground to provide a strong root system for the plants. Had I continued to do more reading on how to tend to them as they grew, I might have done a different staking system and monitored them more carefully. (This video has some great suggestions http://youtu.be/pZWRfLGqH1M, which I will try to implement next year). 

Squash, benas, and corn

Butternut squash!

In regards to the rest of the plants, they seem to be doing alright. But, I think I burned a few beans with too much fertilizer. I was using a fertilizer that was supposed to be added with water but ran out of that when got to the beans and used a different one. I don't think I applied it correctly because some of the leaves have yellowed. However, where the little white buds first appeared last week have small beans on them. I'm hoping that they'll be ready to pick in a few days. 

The male flowers on the corn are up, and earlier I saw set of female flowers on my corn. So, there will be at least one ear of corn (but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for more) 

Also, I have noticed that I have winter squash already growing nicely! 

On another note, the hubs found a little snake in our yard. The little thing was about eight-inches in length and hiding in the mulch near the mail box. He moved it on to the side walk so I could get a better shot of it. We let it go afterwards because we didn't think it would be a threat to Puck. 

S-s-seee you later!!

Macro view of the garden

Tomato flower

Late in 2012, Aaron wanted to up-grade our camera equipment to the fancier  professional versions of the entry level DSLRs that we had. With the camera change, a change in the lenses also was in order. One lens that I have been eying for a while was a macro lens - which if you are a Nikon shooter, it's brand of macro lenes are labelled "micro." My wonderful husband spoiled me with getting one of these lenes. However, due to teaching, taking graduate school-level classes, races, and gardening, I haven't really had a chance to play with the new toy camera, much less with the fun our new lenses. That is until last night. With no grading or any other pressing paper work hanging over my head, I thought it was just as good as any to take a few shots. Since I've been blogging about the garden, I figured the plants would be the perfect test subjects. 

Young tomato

The tomato plants were among the first subjects. Not only did I get some shots of the flowers, it allowed me to be able to carefully inspect the plants for signs of fruits. The past few days weeks had me annoyed with the lack of tomato fruits. There had been plenty of flowers but not fruits. I thought that there could be a lack of pollinators, though I'm not outside very much to verify. I thought this was equally annoying since I had assumed that tomatoes were not picky when it comes to fruiting (I think I need to do more research about this). While shooting a flower on one of my store bought plants, I noticed a tiny little fruit!! I'm hoping that there will be a few more fruits that will begin to show up, and that I do not have to "replace" the pollinators in my yard.

Zucchini bud

This past weekend, I saw bright yellow flowers from my squash plants. I hope that I'll see it a bit more opened up to take some cool shots of it as well.

The corn, which were started from seed, have been growing nicely. One fun thing about the corn plants is the swirl pattern in the middle of their stocks where the new corn growth emerges. It looks like a green vortex.

Looking into the corn stalk

The couple of pictures below are from one of the hostas across the drive way from the vegetable garden. I thought it would be fun to play with Lightroom and see what effects I can apply to the photo, although I had not installed the program on to my computer until last night. Quick note, most of the pictures in this post were cropped and had the exposure adjusted on them to make sure they were not too dark. After playing with the tone, saturation, and vibrance of the photo (and cropping too) the shot on the right is what came out. Not too shabby (imho).

With school out and my main objectives being working on the garden, finishing my course work towards my teaching license, and working out a lot, I'm hoping that I'll have more time to pay around with the camera.