Garden Update – Its July 29

This is the first garden post that hasn’t been hosted on Blogger. I got tired of its cludgey-ness and decided that I will pay WordPress.com the $10/year to have mrcorey.com direct to here.

Its July 29th. Since the last update, we’ve had a few things from our garden. The lettuce that was growing in the pictures from the last post was some of the same stuff that I grew last year. It wasn’t iceberg at all. That didn’t grow. It’s quite bitter if not picked when its small and in the morning, so I pulled it all out and tried putting spinach and beets there. The beets are struggling along but the spinach won’t grow here.

We’ve had two feeds of Swiss Chard and some baby carrots (as I couldn’t wait to eat some of them). The broccoli began to flower one day, so I had o harvest it all at that time. It appears that the long stretch of hot sunny weather we had is not ideal for this crop. Turns out that Broccoli likes cooler weather to grow the way we like to eat it. The flowers are pretty, though. We’ve eaten the florets that grew beside the cut part twice since, as well.

I couldn’t resist having some new potatoes, as they’re just so yummy, so I dug a few up from the sides of the plants for supper one night. The poor plants have been ravaged by the potato beetle, so I’ve pulled up the ones that have been largely defoliated and gathered the resulting tubers for our next few dinners. I am not sure if I want to fight these little guys, as I don’t want the chemicals in my ground. We’ve gotten along okay so far, but I know that stressing the plants like that will likely end their productivity.

The tomatoes are beginning to show fruit, so, despite their small size, they might yield well after all. Also, the squash seem to be thriving. The things that are thriving the most so far, through are the corn, beans, and peas. They’re coming along nicely and I expect to be harvesting beans and peas within a few weeks. By that time, the white onions should be big enough to pick a few out of the ground as well (okay, I cheated and had a few already – yummy!)

As you can see, some of the potato plants are starting to wilt just a bit. Soon, they’ll be ready to dig up.

Some Redirections and Replacements

I’ve moved the posts from my Blogger blog, mrcorey.com (residing on coreylt.blogspot.com) to here. I will be redirecting traffic from mrcorey.com to here and will be doing the upgrade on this space to have the domain point here properly soon.

And it Grows

I intended to post this a few days ago but had to leave the computer before I was finished the post. I have decided that the Blogger interface is not conducive to photographs, so I may be changing things up a bit in the future with this site.

So, all is not lost with the garden. More things are growing than I thought.

Besides the weeds growing between the rows, there are plants that I intended to grow, as well. Th corn is coming up, as well as a few of the squash that I planted (but not nearly as many as I planted – the leftover seed didn’t catch). The beans are coming through, as well as the peas. I had to replant them, as I think that the nights were too cold for them and the first planting didn’t survive (one Pea grew). The iceberg lettuce didn’t grow. What you saw in the previous post was a variety of leaf lettuce that requires picking at a very small size. I pulled that out and put in beets and turnip in its place. I hope that it grows.

Despite some chewing bugs, the broccoli has survived. They didn’t get too big and began to flower before I realized that they were at their largest, so I cut off the ones that didn’t flower and we had them with our supper last night (some of them). Wow, were they ever good.

This is a shot of a potato plant. The flowers are blooming, which means that we will be able to dig some up soon.

We don’t have a hose, so we water the garden by hand. I have a rain barrel that I use to save rain water in and we use that. It was quite dry before the torrential downpour from yesterday and the day before, so the barrel was emptied and we had to use water from our well. But, we haven’t had to resort to using the well until now, as the rain has been pretty constant here.

Despite the sun’s best efforts to burn them off, the cucumbers are still growing, as are the peppers (most of them) and the tomatoes. I hope to have some sign of fruit bearing soon. The zucchini may actually grow as well.

Some Things are Growing

it appears that the image uploader isn’t working at its best today and the images can’t be seen full-sized when clicked. I’ll see if I can get past that somehow.

Its been a few weeks since the last update on the garden (or anything, really). What can I say? I’ve been maximizing my time with the family.

The garden seems to have taken off, at least in part. Just after planting, the weather remained sunny and dry so I was watering every day from the rain barrel (and the tap, as the barrel wasn’t enough). Some of the transplants didn’t make it, partly due to the heat and partly due to the slugs. Those pests are gluttons.

Then, it began to rain…and rain…and rain…and…rain. In the past 3 weeks, we’ve had more rainy days than sunny ones. While other parts of the world are experiencing drought conditions, I get more rain that I can handle. Where’s the fairness in that?

There were a few sunny days, though, which helped the garden to really shoot up.

That bright green stuff is the iceberg lettuce. I’ll have to thin that out and make a salad with the baby greens in a week or two, likely. What hasn’t come up until recently were the carrots. I was hoping that they would take off and be plentiful. Only a few squash plants poked through and the small transplants of broccoli didn’t make it. The tomatoes and peppers suffered but they are rebounding well, it looks like. The beans and peas are not to be found, though. I’ve replanted them. I’m disappointed about them.

If you looks at the picture, you’ll see toward the back a few rows of plants that are doing well. That would be the potatoes. It looks like those will produce and well, at that. The Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and onions are coming along nicely, as is the corn. So, we should have something to eat this summer. I hope that the rest makes it too.

Here We Go Again

Where did my site go this time? The browser says that the site doesn’t exist at all. This is getting to be ridiculous. I think that its going to be time to consider a new web host, despite being paid up until October. I’ve been relying on the email to be working as well. I guess that I had better set up Google Apps to use my email address.

Day two and no news

Looks like the hacker has been thwarted for now, but the host is still crippled. I just might look into what it would cost to just map my domain to here and import the database. Too bad WordPress.com didn’t do what Blogger does and provide it for free.

The Garden is Planted and Mother Nature Watered it Well

I started this post on the day before yesterday but life interfered. Forgive me.

So, I’ve got the garden all planted, finally. I know that, for some people, this might seem to be a lot late. However, here in New Brunswick, the frost can come as late as now. The last danger day has apparently passed by now, so we should be safe.

that’s me in my sexy shorts and rubber boots

I got all of the rows filled with something good. Most is seed, so there’s not much to see, but I’ve got a few pictures to include as an update. I haven’t got them uploaded to Flickr, like Skye did, so they won’t have nice labeled parts, but I may do something with Gimp when they start poking out of the ground.

So, my dad had good luck with the tomatoes in tires last year.
He said it sped up their growth by about 3 weeks.
I decided to try it.

I could have used two more rows, it turns out, as I didn’t get everything that I wanted planted in the ground, but I have some ideas for that. The reason, I believe, was the amount of potato plants that I’m going to end up with. The seed potatoes that I got had good eyes on them and many of them were sprouting well right in the box, so I know that I should get good results from them.

Abby and Caleb planting their own things

The kids had a good time out there near dad. It was really a job for one for a lot of it, but Abby helped out a bit. Caleb was planting his own chive bulbs and dandelion tops in a dish. We’ll see how that turns out. He’s a cutie.

Here’s the part that I transplanted,
including green peppers,
hot peppers, broccoli,
cauliflower, cabbage,
and brussel sprouts

This is the whole garden

Looks like I was Right

Seems that vivahost got hacked. I had a bit of trouble with CoreyThompson.com and the admin account (which I had removed and replaced with a secret login) was changed. I had to edit the database and replace a lot of WordPress files.

I thought that might be a new vulnerability. That was fairly unlikely, though,as I was running the nightly build of the product, which makes it a moving target for hackers.

So, after Ray advised me that the site appeared to be hacked, I tried to reach it. It wouldn’t resolve at all. Looks like the vivahost website also suffered from this problem. So, either they went belly up or they got hacked off the planet.

Either way, since I prudently moved my registration away from them, I merely redirected coreythompson.com to this site (mrcorey.wordpress.com). Until further notice, the site will redirect there. I will also have to redirect my email for now, as well. I’ll get to that after.

Heads up!

And the pictorial moment that we’ve been waiting for

Ok. So, this is not the climax of the century but there is some progress on the garden, finally. I hired a neighbor to till up the garden plot. I wish that I’d have known that he had a tractor. That would have saved me some serious elbow grease. It took him about 10 minutes to do the whole job. Of course, I don’t mind the work. Its some of the little activity that I do.

click pictures for larger image

I’ll be hilling the garden into rows over the next day or so and will be picking rock yet again, as I’ve expanded the plot to double its former size. I should be able to plant around a dozen 20 ft rows in this space. I hope that it all grows well. Its another week before the projected last frost date, so I am wary of planting yet.

Abby sure thought it was great, though. She was happy to run across it several times to leave her foot prints in it. She changed out of her shoes into her flip flops so that she could feel the dirt between her toes!

I don’t know why I took this picture of Abby’s foot print, but I like it. So, next pictures will be of planted seeds, perhaps.

A whole year later

…and I am just getting around to posting now. Hmmm.