As usual, I have been too busy in the garden to stop and write about it. Roughly half of the vegetables I started from seed have been transplanted into the garden. I had some seed failures and needed to try a second time for some crops, so some of the starts are still hanging out in my pop-up greenhouse or on the back deck, which gets morning sunshine.
The above photo was taken May 20. The pickling cucumbers, Delicata squash, and Sweet Dumpling squash seeds were sprouting. But the Red Kuri squash seeds were doing nothing. Eventually one of them sprouted, out of nine seeds. So I started more seeds, and 9 out of 11 sprouted that time.
This photo, also taken May 20, shows the other squash and cucumbers getting a start, as well as the corn. I have sometimes planted corn directly into the ground, and sometimes I have started it in the greenhouse. Our growing season is a bit unpredictable, so it's always a toss-up.
Two days later, I launched into the raised bed experiment. Following the advice of Ms. S., my local gardening and landscaping expert, I purchased a stock tank, filled it about 18" high with sticks, pinecones, and other organic material, plus some peat moss for filler, and then added a bag and a half of raised bed planting mix on top. I planted onions around the edge, then beets in another oval inside that, and a little row of lettuce and one of radishes, in the middle.
The onions are coming up, little by little, but the lettuce and radish seeds were rather old. The lettuce never came up at all, and I think there is one radish. I intend to buy more radish seeds and try again, but it's too late for lettuce now. The beets have not been coming up well, so I added more seeds on June 6.
A visit to Walmart and to a local greenhouse resulted in this combination of flowers in my two deck railing planters on May 24. It includes lobelia, sweet potato vine, verbena, bacopa, calibrachoa, and diascia. All are doing well.
I love hanging baskets of petunias! These really caught my eye, with three shades of speckled purple blossoms. Dead-heading them is a bit of a bother, but the beautiful colors and the aroma are worth the trouble.
My sister introduced me to the idea of using wire wastebaskets from Dollar Tree to protect little plants from varmints. I purchased several and placed them over the sunflower seeds. Most of the sunflowers have come up and are now getting so tall, I will need to remove the wire baskets soon.
Even though I had so much trouble with the soaker hose on my row of gladiolus, I tried another soaker hose for the row of bush beans. I didn't measure quite right, so had to make a curving row in order to fit the hose into the space. The beans are coming up nicely, but I am still not happy with the soaker hose. I have to keep it barely dripping or else it runs off where nothing is planted, even though I really tried to build up a rim of dirt on each side.
On June 2 I decided to set the corn out into the garden, near the beans. I opted to plant it in groups, sort of a circle, with the intention of using a new spot-sprinkler to water it. But for a circle that small (18" diameter) the spot-sprinkler dumps out too much water at once, and it runs off into unplanted areas. So I guess I will resort to the oscillating sprinkler for the beans and the corn, even though I'm told it loses a great deal of water to evaporation.
The same day, I took this photo of the row of gladiolus and the row of tomatoes. The latter went into the ground on May 29, and are doing well. I planted marigolds and nasturtiums between them and elsewhere in the garden as well, because they are supposed to repel certain insect pests. For some reason, the marigolds are not doing well this year. I've never had that happen before. I bought them the same place I've bought them in the past, but nearly half have died.
Last week I planted into the garden the vegetable starts that were big enough. It was pleasant weather, partly cloudy and in the 70s. But over the weekend it became VERY warm, with temps in the 90s for three days. My little seedlings looked quite unhappy with this turn of events. So I bought some shade cloth and rigged up protective covers over the two pepper plants I'd purchased as well as over the squash and cucumber starts. A pepper plant is shown above, and a squash plant is in the next photo.
I had several extra tomato cages, so that's what I used for draping the shade cloth around the pepper plants. Then I used wire cutters to cut more tomato cages into smaller sections to use for the little squash and cucumber starts. I used clothespins to hold the shade cloth in place.
By Friday the weather is supposed to cool off again, so that's when I intend to plant the remaining squash and cucumber starts out into the garden.