May 31 2015

5/31/15 – This is my catch up post.  The rains seemed to have stopped and the temps are raising. The garden is loving this and things seem to be growing before our eyes!  I think the grapes are growing a couple of inches a day, but I could be hallucinating.  The tomatoes look great, however black seaman still has some leaf curl going on.  I need to spray everything with Neem oil and again with that bacillus thuringiensis to take care of the cut worms (one ate the top of my tiny tim tomato in the house) and to be proactive about hornworms.  We have had an inordinate number of hummingbird (sphinx) moth flying about this spring and that seems to indicate we will have a plethora of hornworms this summer.

The potatoes are also growing quickly.  We see new leaves sprouting and growing measurably each day now as well. 

 We worked several hours yesterday in the garden.  Converted the bubblers and sprayers to micro driplines on all the marigolds, in the pepper patch and added them to the corn.  We did some adjustments but will need to look at everything again this morning to adjust flow and repair a couple of small leaks. 

I also thinned the sugar snap peas.  After years of struggling to get anything to grow it is very strange and a bit difficult to thin veggies. I’m learning to be okay with this.  I pulled last year’s lettuce, which bolted this past week or 10- days.  It was good lettuce and we planned to eat it but oddly with the rain and cooler temps we never felt much like salad. So it is now in the compost bin.  That bed is almost ready for planting but last year’s sugar snap peas (about 3 plants) are producing like crazy!  Might have to prep and plant around them as I want to get the eggplants, bell peppers and parsnips in the ground.  I think it might be a bit late to be starting those seeds!

The craziest thing this week is that we have had volunteer tomato plants growing like weeds from the homemade compost we used to amend the beds!  I can’t bring myself to toss them so I’ve been pulling them and planting them in pots and giving them away!  Gardening at 5,000 feet is radically different than doing so at 8,000 feet!

We fed everything in the garden with fish emulsion as well.  It was a very old bottle (probably 17 years old at least) but still plenty stinky of fish.  Hopefully it will still do the trick.  Xena was certainly interested in it.  I’m a bit concerned we will go out this morning to find other critters were drawn to the stench as well!

We also planted a wheelbarrow flower garden to live inside the veggie garden.  It looks great.  Needs a bit of tweaking and to have the irrigation set up today.

I hope to start adding more photos soon!