I’m starting this new post series in the hopes that it will help me keep better track of our gardening adventures!
The garden has been a half-nurtured place this past fall and spring. Between planning for an overseas move that ended up not happening to welcoming a new baby into our family (and planning another move- hopefully closer to Austin and to daddy’s NEW JOB!), that beloved space back there just hasn’t gotten the attention and investment that I really dream of giving a garden. But given that fact, I think things are still looking pretty good out there.
Since constructing all of the raised beds, I decided to keep all of the herbs in pots. Hopefully I will find a prettier way to place them about the yard, but for now they are just sitting in a row along the side of a raised bed. Basil is looking and smelling great and we are getting lots of ripening cherry tomatoes-perfect combo! We’ve got lots of different tomatoes growing and looking good out there right now- we purchased them all from starts, but maybe in the fall we will actually start our own seeds.
I am also really missing having a compost pile right now. We had to buy compost/soil to amend beds and I hate spending money on dirt
So far we haven’t seen too many pests, but this morning I noticed that something seems to be chewing tiny little holes in everything. I may try a simple soap/water spray before going for the neem oil stuff.
The seeds that I did directly sow were in the ground a bit later than I would have liked, but they are coming up and looking good now! When I added soil to a few of the beds, I got a little bit too much compost and not enough sandy loam type soil, so the seeds were having trouble coming up at first and I had to amend the soil a bit more. It’s also probably due to the fact that I bought the cheapest bags of organic compost that I could find.
The growing list right now includes about 10 tomatoes, 8 different types of peppers, eggplant, okra, tomatillo, green and yellow beans, yellow summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, salad greens, lots of chard, calendula and zinnia and tons of different herbs including lavender, tarragon, oregano, basil and more. It looks like we even have a volunteer cantaloupe that has popped up. We still have the tree citrus trees, but for some reason that I cannot figure out, they aren’t looking very well. The mandarin tree, which gave us a few fruits this past season has some healthy new growth toward the bottom, but after blooming well up top the branches are all slowly losing leaves, turning brown and dying. I’m suspecting some sort of fungus or blight? Both the lemon and mexican lime are doing the same and although all three bloomed beautifully, no fruit set. I have checked my watering methods and have been sure to fertilize and add good soil so, I just don’t know. We are in a rough area for bugs and blights I have learned- it’s sad. We also lost our pear tree to fire blight
The peach tree is doing great though!
I’m content with what we have out there for now because as I mentioned before, we have another move on the horizon! Hopefully headed to the Austin area to be settled in a place that will allow us to put down some more garden roots and to at least have a small flock of chickens again!
May 2012 garden (with one last bed to be weeded, soiled and planted- hopefully with some roots like carrots and beets!)
How’s your garden growing these days?
by mamabrit
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