Garden Update (Part 2)

 So, like I said in Part 1, there is a happy ending (though it's not really the end of the garden this year yet) to all the garden drama. Most of my plants have made a comeback - even the lettuce and I have been able to get plenty of good produce from most of the plants. I don't think I can really consider it organic anymore, but at least it's kind of close.

If you read some of my early garden posts, you know that I was having some trouble with some of my plants. For some reason that have not been able to figure out, my cucumber stems split from the ground all the way up and all died but one. It was a sad, pathetic looking little thing and I was fully expecting it to die as well. To my surprise, it survived and during the really hot spell last month, it took off and really began to thrive.

 We went from this (7/9)

 To this (7/29)

 To this (8/8)

To this (8/25)

 To this (8/31)

To this today! (9/3) It's eaten up now, but it was about 8 inches long and about 2 inches in diameter. It was so good! I am also thrilled that there are at least 3 more coming. Yeah, it's not much, but considering I thought they were all lost, this is a big deal for me! 

Then there was my zucchini. It also looked pretty sad at first but it also started to take off during the August hot spell. 

 We went from sad & spindly to...

 thriving...

to producing...

to yummy!

As of tonight, I have 5 or 6 more coming. I am looking forward to having zucchini in my freezer for breads, brownies & casseroles through the coming months.

The rest of the garden is looking pretty good too.

I have 5 or 6 baby watermelons. I hope at least one gets big enough to eat before the weather turns.

 The snap peas are just about finished for the year but they sure have been a yummy treat all summer long.

 I have at least one more meal coming from the green & purple beans.

It looks like we will be getting another pepper. These are supposed to be a variety of colors so I am looking forward to seeing if this one is something other than green.

 

 And check out the flowers on my purple potato plants. I never knew potato flowers were so pretty. I have 4 purple & 9 white potato plants. I can't wait to pull some of these out of the ground!

After picking through all my lettuce and pulling off & discarding the outer painted leaves, it recovered and is now producing lots of healthy paint-free leaves. All but 4 of my broccoli plants were destroyed by the nefarious stray cat and they are looking pretty iffy. I was considering pulling some of the less successful plants and planting a fall garden, but after all the drama, I honestly don't have it in me this year. I plan to regroup and refresh my spirit over the winter and give my all to a new garden in the spring. Until then, I will enjoy the harvest (though small) the earth has given us this season. I have learned many lessons in this process and will be that much wiser for next year's garden.

Garden Update (Part 1)

Two weeks ago, my organic garden took a big hit. When house painters arrived to pressure wash the siding and stone work before starting to paint, I wasn't aware that they would be using bleach. I happened to look out the window and see a bottle of bleach sitting in the front yard and heard them spraying the side of the house. By the time I got downstairs I could smell the bleach. When I got outside, I saw that my garden bed against the house was wet with bleach water. My heart sank. The man saw me come outside and I asked if he was spraying bleach and he said yes, but only on the house. Uh... yeah but do you not realize that the water sprays all over the place, bouncing off the house and onto the garden and it runs down the side of the house into the garden bed directly below? So after talking to them a couple minutes, they said they wouldn't use any more bleach on that side. He also tried to tell me that the rain would wash it off. I tried to explain that it was an organic garden and the bleach just changed that fact. We covered the plants for the remainder of their time there and then once we uncovered the garden, we soaked it to try to dilute the bleach as much as possible. Another concern was that a lot of paint chips landed in the garden beds. The house is old, so we were initially worried about lead but my research has shown me that plants don't take up iron unless there is a very high concentration. I think we should be ok in that respect. I won't deny it. I cried over my garden several times that day. I had worked so hard and been so careful and thoughtful in planning and planting that this just crushed me.

So fast forward 2 days. We got sheets to cover the garden bed to protect it from the painting. When Steve went out to cover it, the painters already had our plants covered. Ok, that was good. I worried a little less thinking that they were being a little more conscientious about my garden. We had to leave for a bit but things looked safe when we left. When we got home, they were done and the garden bed was uncovered but I noticed there was paint on a lot of things. And, there were crushed plants and foot prints where they had stepped into my raised bed to get to the wood panels and fence section. Sigh. I started to look around and noticed a lot of things in the yard were coated with a mist of white paint, including my park bench, planters, solar lights, children's garden fountain, and pretty much every plant in every one of my garden beds. At this point, I was just trying not to have extremely angry reactions. So here are the pics. I really can't say anything more about this that isn't angry.

 All my lettuce looked like this. Paint mist all over.

This is the pile of lettuce I removed from the garden that was paint misted. The paint wouldn't wash off without crushing/destroying the lettuce.

 

 The garlic chives & parsley in this planter were covered with paint mist.

Potato plants

 Watermelon plants

Parsley

Zucchini plants

Beans

It's not just my plants - here's my hose.

My brand new grill cover

My bench on the porch

 The birdie in the children's fountain

The raccoon part of the fountain

 They forgot to uncover a window.

The ladybug sprinkler

Pepper plants

 All the solar lights

The car

Yeah. Not much more to be said about the damages. All in the process of fixing up the place. There is a bit of a happy ending though. But I will share that in Part 2 since Part 1 is getting a little long.

Another Hit to my Garden

While I have been enjoying the bounty of my 1st organic garden, I have come up against some interesting and frustrating problems as well. First was the stray cat who thought that I constructed several large litter boxes for him as he continually dug up seeds and seedlings while doing his business. Despite his sometimes daily visits to my gardens, most of my plants and seeds managed to survive. Next came the painters who started to pressure wash the house with a bleach solution blasting bleach water & old paint chips all over my garden beds. When they came back to paint, though they covered one bed, it apparently wasn't good enough since all the plants in all my garden beds were misted with white paint. I had to throw away loads of lettuce that was painted. I had to throw out some beans and peas as well, but many plants were flowering and have since produced plenty of paint-free edibles. 

Today, I discovered another little surprise in my garden as the kids & I were playing in the sprinkler on this hot & humid day. Many of my pepper plants were leafless! They looked like twigs sticking up out of the ground! I wondered for a few minutes what could be causing that sort of damage. A rabbit? A deer? But why just the pepper plants? Then I noticed a leaf that didn't look quite right. It was curled up kind of odd. I looked a wee bit harder and I saw the leaf moving ever so slightly. Then my eyes focused on it a bit more clearly. It wasn't a leaf at all but a huge, fat, green caterpillar with a red spike on it's end! It was hungrily devouring a pepper leaf at an amazing rate. I looked around for something I could use to get it off my plant. I ran to the house and found the mini pet cage and went back to the garden. I used one of my bamboo garden stakes to try to pop it off the plant, but it put up quite the fight, spitting loads of icky looking green goo out at the bamboo. I'm glad I didn't try to touch it. I finally managed to pull it off the plant and into the cage. He was at least 3 inches long. I couldn't believe the amount of damage he had done to the pepper plants. I started back to playing with the kids and a few minutes later, I noticed another one on another plant! This time, I went inside and grabbed a pair of metal tongs to try to make it a faster removal. This one spit green goo as well, but it ran down the plant. I hope it isn't harmful to the plant. I ended up snapping a small bit of the plant off in the process because the caterpillar just wouldn't let go. After a couple moments in the cage, both caterpillars were clinging to the stem. I don't know what will become of them now but I am quite angry at them for destroying my peppers!

Aren't they ugly? I looked them up online and they are some sort of sphinx moths though I wasn't sure exactly which one. 

How quickly they can strip a plant! Several plants actually!

Even with the caterpillars gorging themselves on my plants, a couple of the plants have a wee pepper on them. I am hopeful that we may get 1 or 2 more peppers before growing season is over. 

The rest of the garden is doing surprisingly well and I plan to have an update post on that soon. Maybe even later tonight!

I Love These Garden Days

Since my garden is finally starting to give me goodies, I decided to have another salad for dinner tonight.

Tonight's salad was lettuce, snap peas & parsley - all from my garden, organic carrots, cheddar cheese, a slice of bacon leftover from breakfast, leftover roast that I shredded and mushrooms sauteed in bacon fat. SO yummy, though not quite as fantastic as yesterday's chicken salad.

Since I've been talking (typing) so much about my garden lately, I figured it was time to write a quick update on it. Parts of it have done remarkably well and other parts, eh, not so well.

The side bed, against the house has done beautifully. I was certain that the lettuce wasn't going to make it because that darn stray cat kept digging in there and doing it's business. Grr. He managed to move all the seed to a somewhat concentrated area so the lettuce is in a big patch rather than the rows I planted it in. At least it grew. Behind the lettuce is my potato patch. The plants closest to the lettuce are purple potatoes and behind them are yellow potatoes. They are growing like weeds! I'm thinking about digging in there a little to see if I can find any fingerling potatoes. They're my favorites.

The other end of the side bed has a red variety of lettuce which is also doing well despite the cats endeavors to destroy the garden. On the right are watermelon plants. No sign of flowering on them yet, but I'm still hopeful. We should still have a good month of heat left to give them a chance.

The crib rail trellis for the snap peas has been wonderful! The snap peas have been giving us loads of peas which makes me & Laural quite happy. Sadly, one of the vines broke shortly after putting the trellis up. It is the sad looking light green and brown one on the right. I keep hoping it will make a comeback. We shall see.

My peppers never really took off. So far, we've had one pepper and it was a little funky looking.

Laural didn't mind. She was super thrilled to be eating something that she loves and that she got to help plant. I saw a flower on another plant while I was taking pics, so we might just get a second pepper before the season is over.

The purple beans have been doing wonderfully! We have been able to pick bunches of them and there are plenty more coming. The green beans in the front never made a huge comeback from the bean leaf beetles, though we have had a couple dinners worth.

My zucchini plants have finally kicked in! In the past couple days they have more than doubled in size. There are several flowers and baby zucchini on this plant. 

See that wee zucchini in there? Yay! There are a couple others in there too but not seen in this particular angle.

I had one lone cucumber plant survive whatever it was causing them to die off. It has a few flowers but no signs of baby cucumbers. I'm hopeful, but not holding my breath.

The broccoli & peppers in this bed are pretty pathetic. The broccoli in the middle was looking better until the cat came back and dug the entire middle area out a few nights ago. What wasn't destroyed by the cat appears to be getting eaten by something. There are a couple plants on the right that might still produce for me, but I'm not getting my hopes up. The peppers seem to be getting stripped by something as well. I think one of the main problems with this bed is just not enough sunlight. I need to find a more shade loving plant for that bed for next year.

So that's what has been happening in my garden. I'm not getting a great deal out of it, but I sure am enjoying what we get. Goodnight garden. Goodnight moon. Goodnight friends.