Sunday, June 18, 2006

Week 10: 17 June -- Things are growing!

It was kind of a frustrating short weekend upstate for me. We arrived up late on Friday night and I discovered that the outside water pipe that I repaired a few weeks ago had once again come undone. That means that a) an incredible amount of well water had been wasted and b) the garden was not getting irrigated for however long the hose was undone, it could have been the whole week for all I know. That meant that Job 1 on Saturday morning was once again mending the hose, not what I needed to be dealing with.

But despite all that some things are definitely growing. The heirloom tomatoes (above) are kicking butt now. Their doing even better than the standard ones which I thought would have been easier to grow.

The cut flowers have now found their feet. They took a bit of time to get settled but they are now standing proud and one is even budding. I'm looking forward to pulling out a few stems each week to brighten up the table and the house. Still no major progress on the sunflowers, but, it's not like we've had major sun yet so I'll cut them some slack.

The zukes and squash are looking good. The zukes flowered last week and now the squash have done so. I pulled of the leaves of the sick zukes from last week and they seem to be doing well. One of the plants has a weak looking stem but I'll see how it develops before I stress about it. The cukes, in the same bed, are happily doing their thing.



But I'm coming to terms with the fact that I probably won't have peas this year. The plants have hardly grown over the past two weeks and there's no sign of fruiting. I think I put them in too late and now it's simply too hot for them. There's nothing I could have done different as the garden simply wasn't ready for them any earlier. I put them in as soon as I could. But I'll know for next year that they really should go in end of March, beginning of April.

And speaking of things growing, I had to throw in this shot of Jim's nephew Jacob with his aunt Trish. He's not really walking yet but he's quite the bruiser at seven months. And, he's one of the best babies I've ever seen. We spent the day with Jim's family yesterday and he didn't fuss once. What a cutie!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

b-
i enjoy reading your blog more and more... gardening seems so nice...
i don't think anything will grow here -- i was pleased to see the weather was down to 99degrees today..
sad to hear that there won't be peas -- they're some of my early-summer favorites..
xxox
s

Jeph said...

Don't give up hope on those peas!!! Because I'm in a community garden plot, and therefore have to wait til the garden club/farmer has it all plowed, marked off, numbered and ready for us eager gardeners, I don't get the option of putting stuff in early. And yet I've always (the last three years) had really good luck with my sugar snap peas and snow peas. They may not seem like much at first, but they can really take off, even in the heat, and provide quite a bit more than they look like they would do.

Great to see your tomatoes and squash are starting to settle in and do their thing. Same here!

What sort of flowers are you growing? This is my first year with some zinnias, and I really don't think I'll be getting much out of them. Must plan better next year!