Garden Report

I have such a hard time pruning enough.  This year I whacked and whacked.  And it's a good thing.

The grape vines have more itty-bitty clusters of fruit starting than I've seen in years. 

Today I weeded the strawberry bed.  Because of the weekend's rains, weeds were sliding out of the ground so easy-breezy.  I couldn't stop weeding.  It was almost fun.  Because I pruned away virtually all of the strawberry bed last fall, the plants had enough space to grow nicely.  I picked a quart of strawberries.  Every year it's the same thing: wondering why I bother growing them when it's easy to buy delicious strawberries.  And then I taste one from the garden.  Yowza!  That's why I grow them.

The cilantro (which likes to reseed itself each year and come up as weeds) when nuts last week while I was out of town.  It bolted, but none of it has gone to seed yet.  I'm wondering if it can be saved by chopping it all off to about 4" high.  If not, no biggie. 

The basil plants (purchased and transplanted) had apparently died shortly after being set in the garden.  But I cut off their tops, and they're looking pretty nice now, with new shoots growing.  Maybe the cilantro will behave the same way??

Asparagus bed is weeded too.  So is the tomato patch and rest of the veggie bed. 

Something likes my beet greens.  Something that doesn't seem to want to walk in the garden dirt, but prefers to stand at the edge, nibbling greens.  I think it will be hard for the beets to grow if the root has no top. 

Something is digging in the lawn.  It looks like the problem we had from a skunk once upon a time.  But tonight we saw four squirrels in the yard, and it looked like they were doing some digging.  Rumor has it that the mild winter means there are probably lots of grubs and things in the ground, tasty tidbits for critters who don't give a rip about tearing up some lawn. 

It's been cool.  Lettuce is growing slowly.  It too is being nibbled, but apparently the lettuce isn't as yummy as the beet-tops.  It's cool enough that I'm thinking of putting in another row of lettuce seed.

It must have been warm last week.  The tomatoes grew a lot.  When I was staking them this afternoon, I saw that the gangly one had taken a beating from the wind.  The main stem of the plant is cracked.  That can't be good.  It would let in disease or bugs.  It would reduce the plant's ability to move nutrients and water around the plant.  But I've seen tomato branches that are cracked, and they sometimes manage to live and bear fruit.  So I left it and didn't dig it up.  Maybe there will still be life and healing.