Update - Yard and Garden - July 15, 2007

Update - July 15, 2007

Vegetable Garden; doing well enough.

Progress of seeds I planted;
-- Corn plants are looking now like corn you see in corn fields.
-- Beans, coming along, not too impressive yet
-- Squash - zucchini doing okay; yellow summer squash doing okay; acorn squash planted late but they started then failed overnight one night (slugs?? or was it because I decided to fertilize and the acorn squash plants were too new to take being fertilized.
-- Cucumbers - well, there are plants, but it's not too impressive yet.
-- Beets have popped up and are shaping out nicely. Note; beets seem to do well here.
-- Radishes planted and harvested already, much less nibbling by critters this year.
-- Elephant Garlic is doing quite well but can't tell till I harvest the bulbs.
-- Garlic (normal size) seem to be doing okay, can't see any flowering though. The transplants at the back of the house failed.
-- Pumpkins - only one or two, the rest failed.
-- Green, Red, Jalapeno peppers - failed
-- Dill - failed
-- Carrots - two plants growing - the rest I accidentally stepped on when they were newly coming up and they were damaged, okay ruined.



Progress of transplants from garden center;
-- bib and red lettuce - okay and growing well. Note; red lettuce adds color to the green garden. Use again!
-- spinach - failed.
-- tomato plants - doing well, one plant has tomato forming.
-- pepper plants - seemd to be doing okay.
-- cucumber plants - hard to tell, still so compact and small.
-- pumpkin plant - slow but growing.
-- onions - doing okay. Separated each bulb and planted 2 batch crops in garden.


Newly planted vegetable bed by front door;
After Sweetie recreated the entrance area at the front door in front yard, he created a new bed for planting. This year I wanted to use it for more vegetables. Since it is strictly clay, I needed to amend it with compost and top soil, before planting anything. It is too late in the season to plant seeds, so I picked up some vegetable plants at the garden center at our one and only department store in the region -- Dennis Company. I'm grateful they carry vegetables, herbs, flowers favorable to our climate and area. It makes for a somewhat limited line to choose from, and it's about 75/25 that what I buy will do well in my yard.



-- Squash - flying wheels squash (looks interesting on the label!) - 1 plant.
-- Squash - hubbard squash - 2 plants.
-- Squash - acorn squash - 2 plants.
-- Peppers - varieties - jalapeno - 2 plants, pimento - 2 plants, green - 2 plants

When Sweetie began this project he finished up another project at the other corner of front yard, bricking in and squaring off that corner. I had started last year to create a tiered flower garden effect to replace the brick step tiers he took out. We discovered in our digging that PO had apparantly tried to create about 4 steps, using bricks, from the garage up to the front yard. Over the years, it got buried, so we found a treasure of bricks and attempted to make it workable. It wasn't too workable, which is probably why it got overgrown in the first place.

He took the bricks to use elsewhere, and that left the tiered effect, which I was prepared to design into a tiered flower garden. I started with some plants late last growing season, and they hadn't much chance of setting up in their new places, so when he decided to change the corner, the plants were amenable to being transplanted.

I'm not real sure now what those plants are by name, so I'll have to backtrack and see what I blogged last year. One is hellebos, and three others to be identified.