The Garden – End of May
I am down to 5 more beds to amend and get ready for planting. It looks like we will have a cooler than normal summer this year. Most of my vegetables can handle that. I prefer cool-season vegetables for the most part.
I am not sure how the tomatoes and peppers will fare. The photos show my make-shift greenhouses. The winter squashes will be permanently uncovered here soon. I hope I can eventually remove the plastic around the tomatoes and the (not shown), plastic tee-pees I wrap around the peppers in the evening. We’ll see. The tomatoes will need the arch unobstructed, normally. If it is too cool, the will not grow to their full height. They are recovering from being transplanted a week ago as it is.
Another view of the large tomato arch. You can just see the bamboo sticks around the pepper to the bottom rightish. You can just barely see that one in the photo above to the far left in the photo. The squashes are rather happy, settling into their beds quickly. They are already getting blooms. I did not get a photo of the second one. It is out by the potato beds, which were planted last week.
I took this photo about a week ago, before planting the peppers. The closing is done very simply and it is a quick task to go around to close them all, except the peppers teepee-wraps. That takes a few minutes each. After getting the peppers in, thankfully I paid attention and sensing that a storm was about to hit, I got them all secured quickly before torrential rains came through. That would of destroyed the peppers and squashes. Whew!
During the winter, we got heavy snows followed by heavy rains. I paid for being lazy and not using the electrical conduit pipe arches for support like I did for the tomato arch. The snow did not fall through the fencing like it should from the heaviness of rains coming right after each snowfall, making ice blocks that caused the arches to collapse. When we finally starting looking at things when the snows melted, we saw our pea arches all wonky- a few were collapsed in the middle and others hanging over like a bakery good that fell in the oven. sigh…
Because the span of the arches were smaller than the tomato arch, we had to bend them, around a giant pine, smaller. The pea arches look rather like cartoon covered wagon arches, don’t they? laughing… We still have not added the small rebar supports on the fencing sides instead of the bamboo ones I had there before. Those, of course, all snapped from the weight of the ice in the winter. I DID get all the peas planted today, finally. The night-time temps have finally risen to a safe range.
After planting the peppers, I did get some of the beds they are in partially planted. Today I got the peas, pickles and cucumbers in their little spots. Tomorrow, I start getting the last 5 beds ready. I can then finish the planting. Yea! I do so enjoy gardening. It is very Zen for me. I get lost in the soil and… yeah. The lilacs finally bloomed and are opening. We have all of the windows open, being a warmish day. The scent coming in is lovely. We’ll leave our bedroom window open until bedtime. That is when the scent is intoxicatingly strong. What a way to fall asleep. You all take care! May your gardens be thriving!
Getting the Garden Started
Rice Pilaf
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