Veggies Love This Weather!

Weather over the past two weeks has been just great! Not much rain to speak of, but since these gardens are small, a little hand watering every few days takes care of that. Tomato plants have nearly doubled in size and have lots of fruit. Should be eating tomatoes in a couple more weeks.
We picked lettuce and spinach for our salad last night to complement the grilled shrimp - was very good!
Everything with the exception of the peas & cauliflower is doing very well.
Butternut getting ready to take over soon.
Jalapenos and red sweet peppers looking good.
Eggplants are thriving. I'm not sure how / where they'll go, but it will be fun watching.
Lettuce, carrots, spinach, green beans, beets, radishes, basil cilantro all going great!
Hope this weather keeps up!

Fingers Crossed!

Things appear to be doing well, although I suspect we would be farther along if I had more sunlight on the garden beds area. Typical day is 4-5 hours of direct sunlight, probably need 6-8.
Everything looks healthy, except for the cauliflower &s sprouts the bunnies ate! However, most plant are still small. Just this week things seems to have taken off. The tomatoes plants are getting much larger, lettuce is looking good (should be larger & harvested by now), and the eggplant that had done nothing has doubled in size in the last week, along with the pepper plants.
I also transplanted the butternut squash, zucchini, & cucumber seedlings.
Just this week I sowed some yellow watermelon seeds (I cannot tell you the source!).
Hope to have continued progress and weather - it's been fantastic!

Cheers!

First Harvest of 2012!

Early season crops are doing alright. Just picked the fist of the radishes today!
Guess I should have planted more. We'll be picking these daily for a week or so.
I did just plant about another 50 seeds so in 4 - 5 weeks we'll have more to pick.

Romaine lettuce is doing fine. Staggered those plantings so starting in about two weeks should have a crop per week through June (unless it gets too hot). Plenty of salad coming soon!

Spinach, beets, carrots, peas, green beans, egg plant, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, and early tomato all looking good. Started all those from seed indoors in March.
Jalapeno and red peppers from seedlings are coming along too.
Also about two weeks ago planted seeds in starter pots for zucchini, butternut squash, and cucumber.
Also Nancy put together a nice flower arrangement in a couple of large pots. Gives the area a nice burst of color.

Still hope we have enough sunlight in the yard with all those neighboring trees. Looking good so far!

One Mo' Time!

It's been a long time since I posted updates. Last year's effort was disappointing.
A lot of folks here had trouble due to the weather, I'll use that excuse too.
About the only things we harvested last season were jalapenos, a couple of small watermellon, andsome roma tomatoes. Most of the tomatoes didn't fruit until September.
By October we had hundreds but the frost came and killed them off.

Anyway, decided to abandon the community garden for a couple of reasons, the least of which is our crops "disappearing". We've had a water problem in our backyard for years and decided to resolve that.
Here's what we did over the last 4 weekends:

• Installed French drains around the perimeter
• Used the soil from the trenches to fill in low spots
• Laid sod on half the yard
• Installed 4 raised garden beds on the other half
• Laid Alabama Sunset gravel around the beds
• Mulched the flower gardens
• Started several vegetable varieties from seed and transplanted into the beds

My only concern at this point is the limited sunlight in the yard due to neighboring trees.
Hopefully we will have a better harvest than last season.
Worst case, our water problems are solved and the yard looks much nicer.
We went over budget of course, total cost around $2,200.

Pics below, I'll have pics of the garden beds later this week.

Happy Gardening!

11 weeks

Cantelope, watermelon, jalapeno peppers, and tomatillos still doing well!
Roma tomatoes are coming in nicely, should have a bunch to pick in a week or so.
Sweet potatoe vines have take over nearly everything.
Cucumber is basically dead like the squash - damn bugs!
Bell peppers have done nothing.
Celerey is growing very slowly, may not ever mature.

9 weeks

• I think the 100 degree weeks stunted the garden for a while. Now that we are in the high 80s it appears the plants like this temperature much better, things are really taking off.
• Insects destroyed all the squash plants and left the cucumber plant on its death bed.
• Most of the sweet pepper plants have not grown since transplanting of the seedlings.
• After the rabbits ate literally every leaf of the sweet potatoe plants, they have come roaring back, and are now likely to take over half the garden.
• Watermellon plants are doing well. We had one nice mellon about 2 weeks from harvest and it "disappeared". Too big for a squirrel to carry away. I guess the neighborhood kids got hungry. We have two more mellons growing very fast. Hopefully the human pests will stay away this time.
• Cantelope is doing fantastic! Have about 8 mellons ready for harvest in about 3 weeks.
• Tomato plants are doing very well but not much fruit yet. Lots of flowers, and appears to be ready to start producing fruit.

5 weeks

It's been 5 weeks since the start of the garden and time for an update.

• Vine plants are all doing well (watermellon, squash, cucumbers, sweet potatoes)
• Sweet peppers are stunted - haven't grown a bit since transplanting.
• Tomatoes are doing just ok.
• Rabbits ate the leaves of all the sweet potatoes yesterday.
• Celerey, brussel sprouts, basil, cilantro doing well
• Added supports / extended the trellis to support the rapidly expanding squash
• Green beans kept in pots at home, doing fine.