25 May 2016

how the garden's doing

the one with plants I can eat. Except there's not much to eat from there yet.
Just lettuces. And the lettuce that grew the best, was the one that's my least-favorite- bibb. It's already bolting, though. Most of the plants in the main bed are doing fairly well, most of the plants in the smaller, newer beds aren't growing as much. I think because the soil is poorly. I built up the soil in that main bed for a whole year and now it's nice dark crumbly stuff I can just shove my hand down into it, don't even need a trowel to plant. (Probably why the squirrels like it so much).
The beets are getting decent size
and the carrots have gone from this
to this in just a week. It's hard to see stuff against other greenery- I had just put down lawn trimmings for mulch. There are peas, but just a few. Why can't I ever grow peas well? Next year I will build a proper pea support.
Ginger has come up in its pot, but halted at a foot high. Hm.
I've put the last few plants in- three stunted-looking cucumbers, a few cosmos flowers, two more marigolds and a handful of sage. Some herbs bought at the store- oregano, basil.
Swiss chard is just sitting there, rather small. I should have remembered it does better sown straight into the ground. At least for me. Broccoli is also growing very slowly. And then I found I had a bunch of poor pepper seedlings languishing in seedling trays. Their size had not increased since putting out first true leaves- probably they were starved for nutrients. I promptly planted them into individual pots with richer soil, but I don't know if they will recover.
Well, at least my favorite tomato plant has grown the quickest. I still had a few cherry tomatoes in seedling tray as well.
They responded quickly when put out into permanent pots under tomato cages on the deck.
The biggest one has outpaced all the 'large' tomato plants by far! But I still have only lettuce and herbs to eat from the garden. It will probably be some time before anything else is ready to harvest, if at all. I might not get any good produce out of the newer plots until I've improved the soil for another season.

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