Garden Update

It's about time for a garden update! The weather has finally been nice enough to spend significant time outside working on and weeding the garden. Those poor veggies were nearly overrun! I have been weeding the last several days in short spurts because I'm so often interrupted by children and preggo achoes.

Here's the "before" picture. I'm not sure you can see all the weeds, but they're all over!


So far our lettuce is the only thing producing edible food. We have romaine & mixed greens in abundance. The spinach was mostly eaten by slugs, but there are still three plants surviving and giving us nice green leaves. I originally planted lots of lettuce seeds knowing I'd thin it out as the growing season passed but then I haven't been thinning it until now! This photo is after I have pulled out 1/4 of the mixed greens. You can also see a hole in the lower, front plant. We have had tiny slugs all over the lettuce, but they're less and less evident with the warmer warmer weather and my attention to the garden.

These are the sugar snap peas. The girls love to eat these right off the plant so I like to have lots of them readily available! We'll definitely have a second growing season of these this summer. I just put up the stakes and strung thread for the the tendrils to climb up. Unfortunately I left these too long and they plants had all grown together in a big clinging bush. I did my best to gently extricate some of the vines and encourage them to wrap around the thread. In two days there are half dozen little tendrils grasping the strings so I hope they continue to grow away from the mass of vines and up the stakes. The stakes are just 1x2" boards from Home Depot that were cut in half on an angle to make a pointy end.

Here's one of little strawberry plants. We are trying strawberries for the first time this year and I've been pleasantly surprised at how well they're faring. This is our most promising berry (there are lots of little green ones growing, too). After two days in the sun, this berry has a hint of pink. Maybe after today's sunshine it will gain even more color and really excite the girls. They have been watching the strawberries closely. UPDATE: After Thursday's sun this berry is bright red!

Here is one of the zucchini plants. Eve took this picture directly from above, but I think the apricot-colored blooms are still visible. The blooms will turn into zucchini over the next month or so. Also, notice the broken shovel to the left of the zucchini plant. Don't try to hammer stakes in with your only hand shovel or your only shovel might break! Gah! The girls are enjoying the pieces of it and I bought a new Black & Decker trowel that is one solid piece of reinforced steel so it'll last a long time (I hope!). Also, praise God again for Ed's full-time work - I had no guilt about buying a new shovel. This small item fits into the budget just fine & it feels like such a luxury!

Overall the garden is growing nicely. We have been disappointed that the cucumbers have failed twice and that only one of the baking pumpkin plants survived, but everything else seems to be doing OK. I tried to find new cucumber plants at Fred Meyer this week but they were out. Does anyone have a suggestion of where to find established cucumber plants? Do I have to go to Molbak's?

Katie