You know your gardening season is well underway when the problems start to crop up! The beets are under attack from leaf miners and the flea beetles have found the eggplant. Also the hot days lately (85⁰F/29⁰C) have caused the Black-Seeded Simpson lettuce to bolt. I usually just ignore the leaf miners and the flea beetles and the plants eventually recover and get on with growing. I've got more lettuce but it's not quite ready yet. 😀 #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland @gardening
It was a spectacularly beautiful day here today and we got all the Cucurbits planted out and covered with my white plastic totes (cloches). We've got:
Zucchini (Dunja)
Squash (Sunburst)
Butternut Squash (Butter Baby)
Cucumber (Marketmore)
Our planting out is almost done now with only 2 more plantings of corn and the Okra still to go in.😀 #gardening #allotment #NewEngland #zone6b #spring @gardening
It has now been two weeks since we planted the first of our corn seeds into their pots. Today was the day that we set them out in to the garden. We will now start another planting of 32 pots for the next row to be set out 2 weeks from today. #gardening #allotment #NewEngland #zone6b #spring #BeetBear @gardening
BeetBear spent the day enjoying the warm sunshine and he went to inspect his second favorite crop, our blueberries. He pronounced them to be excellent, with the promise of many pies in July. Peace, everyone! #BeetBear #gardening #allotment #NewEngland #zone6b #spring @gardening
Up and in the bath. Didn’t sleep brilliantly and I still feel a bit emotionally bleugh. Hopefully the day ahead will perk me up. Any weekend plans at your end?
I sometimes miss a soak in the bath since we swapped ours for a luxurious shower. Mrs Mike couldn't either get in or out of a bath, and I admit I was starting to struggle to get out!
For us a normal weekend is on the plans - #petanque today and #allotment tomorrow, but the weather forecast for Sunday isn't looking good.
Equally, Bank Holiday Monday we're going to see our daughter and the weather is looking poor.
The gardener casts a long shadow upon his garden plot! I was out preparing the section of the garden where the Cucurbits will be going and I could not resist taking this whimsical self portrait!😀 #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland @gardening
Don’t know why I bother buying or collecting seed from previous years. I should just put my home compost in pots and water it: I’d get a nice crop of tomatoes and squashes with a lot less effort… this is from potting on 2 weeks ago
@JimmyB Made this bed using my homemade compost a couple of weeks ago. You can just about see a straight row of beetroot where I used the bottom of a bag of shop compost. I'm rebranding it as a seedbed. Full of squash, tomatoes and perhaps PSB.
Which is good because almost none of my purpose sown seeds have germinated!
The eggplant has now joined the peppers out in the garden row. In the greenhouse, the cukes, zukes, and squash have started to show. Next to them, the first planting of sweetcorn has now shown vigorous sprouting. Won't be long now! 😀 #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland @gardening
Ok, here's an update on the Verbena bonariensis situation from my post yesterday. Less than 12 hours later and the two plants have been almost totally skeletonized by something I cannot see. There is a healthy Verbena less than 6 inches to the left of the picture that is totally untouched. Any thoughts? #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland #insects #entomology @gardening
I have planted about 24 Verbena bonariensis plants in this flower bed & there are numerous self-seeded ones too. In just this one spot at the corner of the bed I have had to replace these two plants 3X. Each time, the plants were reduced to a few shriveled leaf stalks in about 2 days. Everything else is untouched & doing fine. This time I'm trying a defense of diatomaceous earth since I am assuming slug damage. I'll update results. 😀 #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland @gardening
A neighbor very kindly offered me the contents of his compost pile which I gladly accepted and used to finish off mulching around the tomato plants. I gave him a head of lettuce in return for two carts of compost. What a deal! 😀 #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland @gardening #compost
Well, as I said a few days ago, as an experiment I stopped cutting off the flower stalks of the very mature rhubarb I have and this is the result. It's teeming with hover flies and other small flying insects that I could not identify. #BloomScrolling of a sort! #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland @gardening
That's the #allotment trip done - as expected the grass was up to here. I've strimmed until the batteries were dead, so it's another visit during the week to get the rest done.
Unexpected - the sweetcorn & pea plants I put in before our holiday have gone - no sign they were ever there! No sign of the carrots or beetroot coming up either.
Morning! Another very sunny day. Not sure yet what I’m going to do with it. Tom’s going to try out his new lawnmower, woooo! Might go for a walk somewhere. Any plans your end?
We've got to go to the #allotment - there are brassicas in our garden that need planting out, and I'm sure the grass and weeds will be thigh high there.
If Mrs Mike can get up (she's not had a restful night) then we'll take a picnic lunch and make a bit of a day out of it.
#today I got my garden cart back from the neighbors so I was able to move all of my mature compost and use it to mulch around my tomato plants. This used up all the compost that I currently have, so the remaining area will be mulched with a mixture of leaf mold and grass clippings over the course of the season as they become available. While I was doing that, #BeetBear spent some time with his beet crop, cultivating and weeding. 😀 #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland @gardening
This year we’ve grown just six beds of field or fava beans 🫘 Five beds of Vespa field beans and one bed of Sutton Dwarf broad beans (Fava) The Sutton have already flowered and set beans so we’ll have a crop soon 😛 The Vespa are getting taller and starting to show flowers. These produce tiny beans, many more per plant🪴 and they are so tasty 😋 #Allotment#Today#GrowYourOwn#Gardening