I’ve been meaning to do a garden update for a long time, but I never seemed to have pictures of everything handy when I could sit down and do it. So let’s see if I can remember everything that’s changed since the last time. Comments after the pictures.
I haven’t posted much about the garden lately. I guess it hasn’t seemed that interesting—just harvesting things and wishing it would dry out a little—but I’ll try to catch up on that soon. We did finish our garlic harvest, though, so here are some pictures of that.
We’ve been seeing some shiny slug trails on the patio lately, but when Pepper’s dog food was shiny one morning, I decided something needed to be done about it. There seem to be a lot of them this year, maybe due to the cool, wet weather. I suspect they’re also responsible for the holes in the cabbage leaves, since I haven’t seen any cabbage worms.
One thing low-carbers hear a lot is that we don’t eat enough vegetables. The USDA’s food pyramid recommends 3-5 servings of vegetables a day, but they also recommend 6-11 servings of grain, so they’re insane. And since they define a “serving” of vegetables as a half-cup of cooked veggies or a full cup of raw, most high-carb eaters I know don’t come close to that. (Remember, corn and potatoes are not vegetables; they’re in the grain category. Neither is ketchup.)
A couple years ago, I built a simple set of compost bins that we keep behind the garage. It’s two 3×3x3 bins, made of chicken wire wrapped around a 2×4 frame, with a piece of trellis tacked on the front as a sort of gate that can be removed to shovel out the compost.
Time for another garden update, with extra pictures! Comments follow the images.
More garden pictures! Things have really grown a lot lately, with the rain and warm weather we’ve had.
Apologies to all my avid readers for my lack of posts lately. This has been a really busy week, what with my regular work, plus doing quotes for some potential new clients, setting up a new web site we’re working on, getting ready for the Business Expo this week and another thing we’re involved in next week, and keeping up with the gardening and chickens. I had to skip my Latin lesson this week; they’re taking longer now that I’m diverging from the books somewhat and trying to find ecclesiastical selections that fit the lessons. I’ll finish the next one as soon as possible, but I’m not sure when that will be.
These pictures are from a few days ago, but things haven’t changed too much. The garden is going great overall; I’m really proud of how well we’re staying ahead of the weeds and thinning. Usually I don’t thin things nearly enough and they kind of choke each other out, and then when I finally thin them it’s too hard on the ones that are left behind. This year I tried to be brutal about it right from the start, and it’s paying off. (The real test comes when it’s 100 degrees in July, and new weeds are still coming up.)
I pulled the first radishes out of the garden yesterday. They were pretty small, but they were getting crowded, and it’s always nice to have those first fresh ones of spring.
First Radishes of 2009
Also got the green beans planted, just in time for the rain that’s falling today. They’re mostly Blue Lake bush beans, which always do well, but we’re also trying some Contender this year. The catalog really talked those up.
Things are growing fast now, including the weeds, so I pulled a bunch of those yesterday and gave them to the chickens. They’re growing fast too; I’m going to have to get a chicken house built in a couple weeks so we can get them out of the garage.
