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Garden, Page 11

Tomatoes Turning Red and Melons Getting Bigger

A couple of things have been happening in the garden and I wanted to take a look at some of the fruits that are beginning to grow and get much bigger.  This includes both cantaloupes and the one watermelon that is thriving quite well.

Some of the vines on my cantaloupe plants actually have two melons growing and they were covered by the leaves and I happen to miss them when I was working with my plants.  Hopefully they will not take too much nutrients from each other making them smaller than they should. (more…)

The First of Hopefully Many Cucumbers

I have been working in the garden for the past week including this past weekend.  The weather has been hot which is great for many of my plants including tomatoes, melons, and cucumbers.  I have not picked any tomatoes as they have not started to turn red.  They should begin ripening at any time and can’t wait to harvest them.

Cucumbers on the other hand have been growing quite well along with zucchini and pumpkins that are coming along.  All my cucumber plants are now producing flowers and it is only a matter of time before I start picking many of them.  Today I happened to pick the first of many cucumbers. (more…)

Added Ropes to Bean Trellis and Placed Mulch Around Corn

This week I decided to add the ropes for my bean trellis and to finish them as quickly as possible.  Many of my bean plants had started grabbing on to each other and it became a pain to break them apart without damaging the vine.  They are very fragile and can easily break if handled incorrectly.

Having them climb up ropes has proved to be successful in the past years and is a great way to separate the plants and vines.  The ropes are also strong enough to support the amount of beans that could appear especially if you have a good harvest like I did last year. (more…)

Picking More Zucchinis Along with Pumpkins and Cucumbers Growing

This past week has been crazy because I have been weeding my garden every single day trying to stay ahead of the growth of the plants in the garden.  Getting behind can be a pain because weeds will be growing faster than I can remove them.

By staying ahead I can work on other things in the garden such as laying down layers of mulch to block weeds, placing ropes on my bean trellis for my pole beans to climb, fertilizing many plants, and so much more. (more…)

Pumpkin, Zucchini, and Cucumber Vegetables Starting to Flower

Today is just more of an update on the garden since it has been at least a week since my last post.  This week has been crazily busy especially with all the rain and the weeds growing in the garden.  I have had to work in the garden most of the week trying to remove all the weeds that I could.

All I have left to weed would be the tomatoes and some other small areas.  I will begin mulching some plants which might include corn and maybe beans.  It all depends how much mulch I am able to collect this week. (more…)

Weeded Entire Garden and More Lettuce Picked

Just wanted to update you on what has been going on with my garden over the past week.  So far I have only been picking my black seeded Simpson lettuce at the moment which is a great iceberg type lettuce.  It The lettuce has been growing quite well and the leaves have grown to large sizes.

I am very happy about this because last season I didn’t grow any and I definitely missed out on their great flavor.  I still have not picked any of the ruby glow hybrid leaves yet, but they are not growing as fast as my iceberg lettuce.  Granted these are romaine type leaves and I will have to pick them differently than my iceberg type leaves. (more…)

Picked Some Strawberries This Week

One of the good things that happened this week was a harvesting of just a few strawberries.  I wasn’t sure if there were going to be many berries this season, but there was enough to have the first harvest.  Only a handful were picked and there are still plenty left on the plants.

The next harvest I am sure will occur sometime this week either tomorrow or sometime during the weekend.  Hopefully there will be many more than the first harvest.  The first is always a small amount, but the second or third time is when you reach the peak of strawberry picking season. (more…)

First Lettuce Harvest of the Season

Today was perfect for picking lettuce leaves especially after the rain we got this past week.  The cool weather also helped them and it showed when I started harvesting the plants and how big the leaves were.  They were similar in size to my spinach leaves that were picked last month.

I probably could have picked some leaves in mid to late May if I wanted to, but I wanted to make sure that the leaves got as big as they possibly could.  Most of the plants had large lettuce leaves which were the oldest and the first ones harvested. (more…)

Transplanted Last of Tomatoes, Two Eggplants, and Five Pepper Plants

I had ten more tomatoes that were still in pots and continuing to grow, but starting to look like they were becoming pot bound.  This is something to avoid when growing indoors and since they had grown as far as they could in the containers I thought it would be best to place them in the garden right away.

I have over twenty tomato plants that are either steakhouse, Roma, or cherry tomatoes.  I should have more of the super sauce Roma plants than any of the others because I planted all 25 seeds that came in the packet and only a few of steakhouse and cherry.  Hopefully more sauce to be made this season. (more…)

Planted Corn, Carrots, and Bean Seeds in Garden

Now temperatures are in the high 70’s and the month of May is coming to an end I thought now would be a great time to start planting bean, corn, and carrot seeds into the garden.  I could have planted them earlier in the month, but I wanted to get most of my transplants into the ground first before growing these seeds.

The good news is that these plants do not need that much time to mature except for maybe corn.  Carrots do not need that much time to complete their roots and pole beans once they start getting flowers they are pretty much all set for the season. (more…)