May gardening

I only got started with this summer's garden at the end of April.

Today, I planted some beans! I haven't weeded the actual garden plot enough yet, so I decided to get started in little containers. I also inoculated them, which is supposed to make them healthier and yield more beans. I bought a small package of inoculant at Wells-Medina Nursery. It consists of a couple kinds of rhizobial bacteria. Hopefully my beans will have some good symbiosis going on! Two way relationships are good for everything and everyone... Makes for healthy beings all around. Even beans :)

I have three types of beans this year: Sugar snap, "Renegade" bush beans, and "Burpee Stringless Green Pod" bush beans. I had the sugar snaps from last year, I bought the "Renegade" bush beans this year, and one of our caregivers gave us a package of the Burpee kind.

Yesterday I went to the Seattle Tilth plant sale at their Good Shepherd Demonstration Garden in Wallingford. I was supposed to go to the "1-2-3 grow a garden" class, but traffic was SO BAD yesterday, especially in the UDistrict, that I was only able to show up for the last 15 minutes of a 1 hour class :/ I walked around the demonstration garden and took notes about the plants and the informational signs they had around, so although I felt really frustrated for missing most of the class, I did come away feeling like I'd gotten something from my visit.

I bought some plants at the plant sale: 2 lavender plants (hopefully they will help attract pollinators to my garden!), a lemon thyme plant, a "crookneck squash" plant, a "Sweet Million" cherry tomato plant, and another cherry tomato plant that is supposedly a relative of "Sungold," the tomato I liked the best from last year.

Here's a picture of the "Crookneck" summer squash seedlings-- apparently native to this area. I'm excited for it!

I bought some strawberry plants at Home Depot a couple weeks ago. Hopefully their yield will be bigger and better than last year's. I can't put much energy into getting a couple dinky strawberries again... :p

Here's one of the salad planters I've got going. I bought the mesclun mix from Wells-Medina nusery. I hope to be grazing all summer long :) You're supposed to be able to cut leaves off a maturing plant, and keep coming back as the plant grows more leaves.

Finally-- problem of the season. I reused pots and some soil from last year. I didn't see any slugs, but I think I potted my plants with sluglings!! They're eating some of my plants. This is a ruby red chard plant, but they're a little leany because I think a slug has been chewing around the stem. I intend to go out tonight and see if I can find those nasty things. If I do, it is their END! >:( This is annoying because I planted many of these specifically in pots to reduce the predator load. I may actually go out and buy me some beer. This slug business is not acceptable!!

One thing I'm going to try this year include building a "cloche" -- kind of like a portable greenhouse you can set over the top of a garden plot to ward off animals and also raise the temperature of the ground and air inside. I'm also going to try to get "floating row covers" -- looks like a gigantic dryer sheet-- to try and keep bugs away from my plants while still allowing them air, sun and water.

More garden

I check back the next day and my plants are progressing even now! Yay! My tomato got reddish! Now it's orange! Amazing... it was just yellow yesterday.



My strawberries ripen at different times and they are all tiny, maybe 3/4ths of my thumb in width. I ate one today, and it was great. But small. Dumb squirrels! I'll eat you out of my yard!


My bell pepper plant sprouted a flower :) This breed is supposed to make jalapeno sized bell peppers that are red, yellow and orange. Hopefully it does that.


Everyone's been saying how the weather's delayed all the growing seasons for plants, so I have some hope that maybe summer will go longer into September. Delayed summer means my allergies are still on!! --even though it's July and the grass is supposed to be done with.

Gardening

Lately I've been into gardening. Somehow, the idea of growing one's own food is very enticing. And, just growing things is somehow rewarding... caring for it, watering, weeding. I even cleared land to plant my plants!

I may be turning into my grandmother, although she never directly taught me anything about knitting, crocheting, sewing, or gardening.

One of my pots of strawberries, above. Squirrels keep getting the berries! Argh...

My bell pepper plant. I hope it flowers in time.

A bush cucumber. I just put it in and it's early July, so I hope I didn't plant too late.

Above three: I have 2 tomato plants in pots. A "4th of July" medium sized tomato (just starting to blush yellow... so not quite ready on the 4th of July as it claims), and a cherry "sungold." I got them at the Bellevue Farmer's Market and they were expensive, but they are working out better than the $2 tomato plants my mom got from Fred Meyer, so far.

My zucchini plant, "costata." It is growing leaves ferociously, but I'm not sure when it's supposed to fruit. By the end of summer, I hope.

I just sowed seeds for kale and swiss chard today, in hopes that I'll be able to harvest some in the fall/winter. We'll see how that goes. My mom is skeptical of plants that start from seed. I have a ton of kale seeds left over. I'll either have to clear the rest of the garden plot (a couple hours!), find an existing clear spot to grow them, or just keep the seeds for next spring. Or I could find someone to give seeds to. I don't know how to cook or fix chard OR kale, so I'll have to research that. I was just desperate for something to grow in midsummer, and my options were limited.