Monday, July 10, 2006

For the record

This is what I've done in the garden during the last couple of days:

(1) Removed 8-foot-tall collards. They should have been removed long ago, but the bees seemed to love the flowers and the foliage was shading my lettuces, so I kept them. Finally they outlived their usefulness.

(2) Removed 5-foot-tall chard. Was startled to find that, because the plants had gone to seed such a long time ago, there was an understory of younger, unbolted chard underneath, which now looks very healthy and happy. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried, folks.

(3) Planted second round of tomatoes: one row each of Sungold and Shumway Early Big Red in the garden proper, and one row each of Sungella and Principe Borghese in the greenhouse. The greenhouse isn't covered right now, but it will be later in the year, when those longer-maturing tomato varieties may need a bit of protection from early frosts.

(4) Admired hummingbirds flitting around in the Scarlet Runner Beans.

(5) Planted fourth round of green and wax beans. Harvested a few beans from the third round.

(6) Cleared away last slug-eaten cabbages, dug in some organic fertilizer, and planted a second round of cucumbers (Cross Country this time, because I ran out of Picklebush seeds) in their place.

(7) Because squashes overall are doing so poorly -- probably due in part to their unfortunate placement in the newest section of the garden, which is still rather clayey -- I planted one hill each of zucchini, yellow crookneck, and Delicata squashes in loamier parts of the garden.

(8) Discovered, much to my surprise, that even though the potato plants were attacked by grasshoppers and have never bothered to flower (which I thought was supposed to be one's signal to dig up new potatoes), there are baseball-sized potatoes underground!