Garden Updates

It's been hard to get much gardening in the last couple of weeks. The rains have been absolutely torrential, in the fullest sense of that word. We got more rain in the first four days of June than we usually get all  month (and June is not particularly dry here). The weather seemed to have a perverse ability to clear up when I had to be someplace away from the house, and just as I was thinking "at last, I can do some gardening when I get home", the dark clouds gathered and began to dump water from the sky.

Many of my plants are not doing well, especially melons, squash, and cucumbers. They're just not liking the combination of cold and wet when they're supposed to be growing. The snap peas on the other hand are ecstatic.

Still, in the couple of nice days we did manage to have, I got the whole front garden weeded out (weeds don't seem to care about less-than-ideal growing conditions) as you can see above, it actually resembles a garden plot now! To the left of the fence, you can barely make out the newly-fenced addition where I've got a double-row of corn planted.

Lucky for me, I didn't transplant out any of the tomatoes from the cold frames, because the tomatoes that are out in the open air look puny and unhappy. The ones in my cold frames look quite good, especially since they were grown from seed! They're having a happy time, and I'm not sure yet when or even if I'm going to transplant them out of there.

Sunroom Starts

Last year, we enclosed our front deck to make a sunny room/covered entry into the house. Although it's not finished off yet, it has already shown to be extremely useful at mitigating climate (providing a warmer entryway than the cold outdoors in the winter, and shading our front door from the hot western sun in the afternoon of the summer). The deciduous tree right outside the windows ensures that it stays cooler in the summer but lets the sunlight in during the winter months. This time of year when the sun can be shining but still chilly outside, it has proved to be about 15 - 20 degrees warmer than the outside air during the daytime hours.

We also used it this year to start some veggies for the garden, and it has proved to be a nice little greenhouse growing room. Now that last week's frost, sleet, and pounding hail are (hopefully) all done with, it's time to plant all of these little guys out!

And speaking of veggie starts, these radishes are coming right out of our cold frames and into our salads. Yum! The cold frames did not provide enough heat to germinate the tomatoes I planted, but the basil, cilantro, lettuce, and radishes are all in good form. This radish variety produces a variety of colors, it's the Easter Egg II from Territorial Seed

Extending the Gardening Season

Last year Wayne picked up some windows at a garage sale, and we also replaced our shower door so he had the old glass door to work with. He took those plus some reclaimed lumber and some newer wood and hammered up three lovely cold frames. There's already lettuce, radishes, basil, and some other stuff cropping up in them. I'm excited to be able to extend our growing season into the cooler months of spring and fall with these. It will be a learning process this year, so we'll see how they work out. In the 3rd one, I planted a couple of different types of tomatoes from seed. I've always grown tomatoes from starts before so that's another new gardening adventure!

Whoops

I put the lid up on our new cold frames today because it's been so nice and sunny. But then later I forgot and let the chickens out to forage. Of course they found the cold frame and all of the tasty little teeny plant shoots within. So there goes my veggie starts. Wah!

Chalk that one up to experience, I guess.