the 2010 garden

Tomorrow we should be planting the last few things for the garden until the summer planting when a few things have died off.  We still need to plant sunflowers, gourds, and a couple more rows of green beans.  This year we left out the corn which just did not do well,  the watermelons and cantalopes because I think they need a patch to themselves, and the okra, lets face it okra is just plain nasty.  In the main garden we have around seventy tomato plants, a row of cucmbers, two rows of squash about fifteen pepper plants, and eight eggplants.  We probably should have gone smaller with the tomatoes, but if we don't get destroyed by bugs this year we will have a bumper crop and probably have to put a bunch up as sauce.  Since we planted we have had little rain and so everything is growing fast in the unusually hot weather.  Last year when we had rain every couple days I thought that was great because we didn't have to water much, but the guy running the blueberry farm told me he would rather have all the sun all the time.  He said he could get water, but couldn't make any sunlight. 

The kids wanted their own patch and were happy to take this spot that had five tomato plants that had grown up on their own.  I had to put up a male shift fence in order to let the chickens out.  They could easily get over the little fence, but they won't bother because they have plenty of other easier things to eat.  Unfortuntatly something already ate one the pumpkin sprouts in the corner, but I know it wasn't the chickens because the soil around it was undisturbed.  Because this is where the chicken coop was for a long time, the small area is heavily fertilized and may end up producing the best plants.  I am going to go off into the dark forest behind the house and get enough pine straw to heavily mulch this small area so that the weeds will die off.

We decided to grow onions and potatoes this year, but maybe should have put something else in the raised beds.  The beds also have garlic and shallots as well as rhubarb and asparagus which will take years to produce.  Onions and potatoes are so cheap it almost seems silly to grow your own, but a few people have said that the fresh potatoes will be great so I will have to wait and see if it was worth the effort.  I had to take the herb containers and move them all inside the area because the chickens had decided they were the best place to dig.  I wish I had put a little more thought into this and set it up in such away I could cover it with plastic to make a green house and extend the season.