Friday June 17th, 2011

I thought I'd start this post with a splash of color. This is the first of Mom's lillies showing off.

The beets, everything is a lot bigger this time around, as you will see...

The tomato plants are now up over the third rung of the trellis cages she puts around them. I have a shot of some tomatoes later in this post.

The peppers are a little beat up. Bugs have been chewing them and they seem dry to me.

Cucumbers will be along shortly.

Cabbage. Getting bigger.

Zucchini...these things get really big and spread out all over.

Tomatoes. mmm hmm.

Leeks. Mom will be pulling these occasionally, as needed, to make soup.

Asparagus. 'Must be about the easiest vegetable there is to grow. Mom doesn't even weed them very often.

Raspberries.  mm  hmm... They will be red in a few days. Then you won't be able to pick them fast enough.

Big onions.

Slow but sure the apples are coming around. The neighborhood kids discovered these last year. They'll be plucking them regularly in about 2-3 weeks.

Look at all those peaches. Big and colorful. You don't know what you're going to be missing.

The red leaf lettuce hasn't had any issues this year.

I don't know why, but these cabbage are much bigger than the others.

Blackberries. Just as bad as raspberries.    

This is the thyme again. It has filled out pretty good.

The green leaf lettuce has come back alright. 'Just needed some rain.

And one more splash of color. Mom's front corner plot.


That's it for Friday June 17th, 2011.

June 16th, third post today, June 4th to the weekend of June 11th.

The leaf lettuce is starting to get pretty big and I am seeing Mom put it into her garden salads and on her sandwiches as well:

The tomato plants have been given back their trellis caging and are starting to get big enough to droop a little bit. Mom will drape the branches out of the cage so the cage cross members will act as support. This will be important once the tomatoes develop and start to get large.

This row of onions behind the raspberry patch is pretty big now. Mom will start to pull one or two of these for salads. They are about 3 and a half feet tall now.

I am not sure why but last year this tray of green leaf lettuce was moved up into the shade under the apple trees. This year has been a lot milder temperatures. We've only had one day so far above 90 degrees. There is another couple pictures of these coming up. They went through some trauma which I'll show you later.

The front flower plot is thicker and thicker. Flowers soon.

This week the weather went in a new direction. We haven't gotten much rain sine the cool of last week and so Mom broke out her leaf mulching machine and hired a guy to come and help her mulch bags of leaves she saved from last Fall. Then I had to go and get more buckets of mulch and you can see here bopth leaves and mulch have been piled around the plants. This will help fertilize them and it will also hold moisture down.

The carrots are getting bigger and bigger.

More mulch and leaves mix spread around.

The leeks got mulch but no leaves mix.

The asparagus just keeps on growing. It hasn't gotton any special attention.

The peaches are filling out. 'Won't be long now before these will be ready for plucking and eating.

Its a little blurry but you can see the apples are doing okay. We won't know for a little while yet whether they will be any good for eating this year. So far it looks like the bugs aren't after them and that's a good sign.

Cabbage and onions, gettin' bigger and bigger.

The trillium are spent. Mom has placed mulch around them to fertilize them for next year.

The weather wasn't very nice this week. Not much rain fell, and with the dry air that has come through the plants are starting to dry out. Mom watered as much as she could but she missed this tray of green lettuce and I noticed it started to dry out and perish.

The news started telling about stormy weather coming across the country and how tornadoes had hit various places like St.Louis, Missourri, and this weather was heading for us. Our local news broke in during the evening keeping us aware of what was going on and we got a warning that a possible tornado was heading for us here in Corning. It didn't actually develop but we got lots of rain that night. Springfield, Massachusetts did have a torndao rip through town and make a mess of things.

After it rained though and the wind quit blowing I found the green lettuce had sprung back a little bit:

It is interesting to see the brown and dried lettuce has wilted down to next to nothing, and what was green has started to swell and turn green again.

After the rough weather Mom had me get more mulch and she started spreading it everywhere again. The front corner plot got a heap of it.

The ivy bishes both got some mulch put under them.

The beets grew alot, they are much bigger than they were a week ago.

The raspberries are starting to get some color just now. Once they get ripe they can easily be plucked off and eaten. Many will fall on the ground and birds, rabbits and squirrels will enjoy them, some will reseed and make new bushes.

And the wild onions. This batch sits right next to the outdoor gas grill. My Mom's birthday was this past week. She turned 88 years old. My brother cooked the chicken on the grill but he plopped the grill cover on these wild onions. He means well but is a slob. I picked the grill cover off of these about 3 days later and covered the grill back up.

And that's the posting for June 16th. I know that was a lot to take in. The fun starts pretty soon.

June 16th, 2011 second post, before and after the freezing temperatures.

When the temperatures drop Mom covers up the sensitive plants:

This plastic tunnel, which is available for purchase from here, even though it is open ended, will help to keep the plants underneath from being exposed to frost and freezing temperatures. These are the tomato plants, notice to the right the lettuce is not covered. Apparently it can handle the cool weather.

We had 2 nights where the temperatures got down below 40 degrees Fahrenheit so these coverings came off the next day and went back on the next night.

More tomato plants covered up with the now empty mulch buckets.

More cover up. I think the peppers are underneath this.

You haven't seen this little plot before. It is about 4 feet long and 2 and a half feet wide. These are beets coming up.

Ever since then, which was the weekend of June 4th, we have had nice weather. In the next post everything is getting to be a pretty good size.

June 16th update to Mom's Garden 2011

Even though this is the June 16th update, most of these pictures and this post are from June 1st and June 5th and June 10th, I have simply waited until now, the 16th to post this part of the story as I have been busy.

 The leaf lettuce has been doing pretty good and is filling out.

The carrots also have been doing well. For some reason this year there has not been a varmint eating the carrot tops nor pulling them , nor digging them from the ground. All last year Mom complained as something was getting at them. I offered to build a chicken fencing frame that could be dropped over these patches to keep critters away but she shook her head and told me no to this idea.

Mom has added more of these tomato plant cages. I do not know if there is a reason why some tomato plants get these and others get the stake type.

The tomato plants are doing okay, we've been a little dry lately. Our next door neighbors got their tomato plants ine arly and they have one that is three times the size of these, but Mom hasn't mentioned it, mom has many, many more tomato plants and will be giving tomatoes away before too much longer.

These are bell pepper plants, freshly planted, I think a little late but they will do okay.

Zucchini. These sprawl all over the place. In a few weeks Mom will put plastic underneath these to keep the resulting zuchini from laying on the ground which can spoil them.

The big leaffy plants in closest to us are cabbage, and the skinny long plants in back are onions. She plants these near to each other as the roots of each help the other.

Here is the rainbarrel as promised. It stays pretty full all season long with the rains we get. It does collect some tar that runs off the roof and so it needs to be emptied out either in the Spring or Fall to get rid of that sediment build up. This gets extremely heavy when full. You can see how its weight is forcing the side of the deck it is on into the ground.

The front corner plot has been slow going. These pink flowers have bloomed nicely though.

The iris are in full bloom now. In about a week these will start to fizzle, and a week after that there will just be stalks with no flower on them.

The front flower bed has filled in, these are getting nice and big and will start to produce flowers in about 2-3 weeks. Hopefully next post I will be able to show you some blooms in this shot.

Lots of little blooms in the front flower box attached to the house.

This is also in the front flower box. Pretty pink.

I went and found the black raspberry plants. Here is one of them. The bees have polinated them already and the stamens are wilting and in about 3-4 weeks these will turn into berris. And today Mom has discovered she has wild strawberry plants in the same area. Apparently birds that have been grazing strawberry plants elsewhere have dropped seeds from elsewhere here and they have started growing. When I can I will post a picture of them. We've been eating storebought strawberries for about a month now. Mom will be chatting it up with everyone for the rest of this year how she has wild strawberries now.

Here raspberries are also doing pretty well. These will start to take on color over the enxt 2-3 weeks and will be ready for picking in about a month. Mom will gather as many of these as she can to make jelly with.

 

This is the end of the June 1st pics. The weather turned very cool after this and we had forecasts stating we might get freezing temperatures. I'll show you what happened in the next post.