Garden

We picked enough beans earlier this week to add to a stirfry, but tonight was the first time I picked and got almost enough for the supper veggies. I'm beginning to realize that my garden this year is only big enough to be a hobby (because I need a hobby??) and not enough to really supply us much food -- much less produce enough that we can put some veggies up for winter. See my watermelon vines? I think we'll be awash in watermelon. Yummy! The cantaloupes, though, hiding behind the tomatoes, just aren't setting fruit. Gary's even tried hand-pollinating them. We may have to try some more. Cucumbers are in the front corner by the corn -- I hear that the spikey cukes and winter squashes may serve as a deterrent to corn robbers (aka skunks and raccoons).

Our salsa pepper is the plant that bore earliest and, so far, most prolifically. When we picked the first one --not knowing how hot it might be-- I wasn't careful to wear gloves when I chopped it. Burn burn burn! Not gonna make that mistake again! I hope these peppers keep coming along until after the tomatoes ripen. I'm drooling over the salsa possibilities. (Of course, the cilantro ain't doin' squat, so I may have to buy that...)


Beans and one zucchini plant are up in the one raised bed. The other has itty-bitty teeny-tiny rows of turnip and spinach and carrot and lettuce and rutabaga and other stuff.


My sprinkler broke yesterday. The replacement sprinkler doesn't reach as far. My asparagus (in the corner of the "L") was barely dampened with yesterday's watering. We'll need another length of hose or the self-discipline to remember to go out with the sprayer to water that corner. There's a little parsley tucked between the blueberries and blackberries, close to the front of the picture. Yukon Gold potatoes are planted down the middle of this garden section, between the baby raspberries.
Somebody who left hoofprints has been nibbling the leaves of my strawberries. Somebody should die and end up in my freezer. I've heard that the smell of humans can serve as a deer deterrent. So, can you get arrested for public indecency (which in these modern days classifies you as a sex offender) if you decide to pee around the edges of your garden? If you did it at night, the neighbor kids wouldn't catch you. But the mosquitoes would -- owie! Athena does a great job takin' down Thumper, but I don't think she's going to stop Bambi. Given the weird shape of our yard, and the hills and the septic mound, our garden spots are going to have to fit into weird locations with weirder shapes, and 6' high deer-proof fencing could get rather expensive for our garden spaces.