It's been a month since our last entry and, frankly, we didn't realize it had been that long. Life has been busy around here with all of the gardening we've been doing, plus other stuff. The bigger the garden, the more work it is to keep it weeded, keep things picked and keep Mother Nature and her minions from ruining your work.
The garden has been producing for over a month now. We had our share of radishes as we mentioned in the last entry. Now the zucchini, squash, cucumbers and bush beans have come on in full force.
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We have two trellises of cucumbers. Giving them something to climb
allows them to grow nice, straight cukes. |
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| These will need one more day. We try to pick them when they are about 5-6 inches long. |
We also have peas, which we planted a little late, so they're not thriving in this heat, but we have a few in the fridge and a few left on the vine, with some pole beans next to them.
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| Peas to the world!!! |
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| The pole beans with a few weeds in front and the cukes providing the backdrop. |
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Zucchini (right) and squash (left) with a volunteer sunflower
and some zinnias mixed in for good measure. |
This is what happens if you forget to pick your zucchini for a couple of days.
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| Boat paddle? Fence post? Radioactive seeds? |
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| I haven't made it past the cukes, zucchini and squash yet! |
The rest of the garden is growing. Great in some places, slowly in others. Our tomatoes have been slow to grow, despite plenty of rain and sunshine. We do have a few green ones on the vine, but no ripe ones yet.
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| The cages of tomatoes. Approximately 50 plants in all. |
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| Soon...we hope! |
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| Indigo Rose |
We also have okra, both planted and volunteers from last year.
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| Volunteers. We love it when there's less work involved. |
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| Red okra already showing some tiny pods. |
Our sunflowers are no slouches. Neta planted a row of various seeds, but only a few came up, though they are some nice ones.
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| The big one in front is a "Skyscraper" with the potential to grow up to 12 feet. |
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| It's well over 7 feet at the moment. |
With the lack of sunflowers from the first planting, Neta grew more sunflowers in seed trays and transplanted them into rows later. So far everything is doing well.
Last but not least in the garden is our corn and melons. The geese had a field day with the original corn we planted and after they had their way with it, we could only salvage about 8 stalks, which we ended up transplanting.
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| The transplants. They're surviving. |
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New corn. It's kinda hard to see, but trust me, there are several rows there.
There is a canary melon in the foreground. |
We have two kinds of cantaloupes and a canary melon (seeds from one we ate). They started out slow, but have begun to take off lately and every plant has at least one melon showing.
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| Kinda furry. I hope he outgrows it. |
Going back to the transplanted corn for a moment, we finally broke down and realized that between the geese and the deer, we needed to do something about protecting our garden. There is plenty of fencing available on the farm, along with some we brought along for Sammie when we moved down. Using the dog fence, we closed in about 2/3 of the big garden. That keeps the geese out. The deer can still jump it as it's only about 4 feet tall, but we hope it's enough of a pain that they'll move on to easier pickings. So far they have. We also have a 24 hour "sentinel" on guard...this guy:
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| The Scarecrow! |
The Scarecrow is a motion-detecting sprinkler that we've had for a few years. We used it to keep the herons and raccoons out of our fish pond when we lived in Vienna. It can't cover the whole garden, but it will hopefully keep the deer off the sunflowers. We've been lucky so far.
So here was today's bounty after I finished picking the bush beans. Keep in mind that we also have beans and peas in the fridge from previous pickings. Neta has been taking produce into work and giving it away as we can't keep up with production. There's been too much going on to preserve things for now. But soon...
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| Aside from the giant zucchini, everything else is pretty normal. |
In other news our swallows have laid eggs (4) and the chicks have hatched.
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| The one at the front right was giving me the "stink eye". |
They provide plenty of entertainment as the adults swoop in and out feeding the chicks, their hungry mouths agape waiting for a delicious meal of bugs.
Finally, in home improvement news, we got a couple of chairs and one of our gliders sand-blasted and painted. I got a recommendation about a man in Statesboro (Statesboro Powdercoating) who refinishes just about anything you want. I took them to him and he worked his magic...and then some.
The other glider hasn't been painted yet, but here is a picture of it as an example of the "before" state of them both.
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| Not bad for a 4 or 5 year old spray paint finish. |
But here is the new, improved finish on the other glider (and chairs):
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| It looks almost brand new! |
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| A closer view of the finish. |
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| It's like a peel and facelift! |
That's about all for now. I hope we can be more regular than once a month, but know that we are always busy and working to improve things around here with gardens and other stuff. We hope our next post will have news or ripe tomatoes. We'll see...
