Week 6 Garden Update: Deer-1, Nathalie-0

They got me. The deer finally got me. I thought I would possibly get lucky with keeping the critters at bay this summer but I woke up to find my garden trampled this morning! The good news is the tomatoes weren't touched. The bad news is all my cute little peppers were eaten, and my squash, completely trampled! It is time to get serious. These deer have not beat me yet.

Week 5 garden update!

WOWIE the garden is growing!! I now have PEPPERS and TOMATOES and little tiny mini squash! And the cucumber flowers are huge! Here are a few photos from this week. I focused on the peppers because they are so cute.

 

Garden Update!

Well, the garden is still going strong! I think one of my tomato plants may be struggling a bit but hopefully I can nurse him back to health (with good thoughts, because I dont have any medicine). My parsley took quite a beating during the last big rain storm but that is perking up a bit too. Here are some photos! You can see my tomatoes just keep getting bigger, and of course the squash and cucumbers are all over the place. The peppers havent seen too much growth, but they are starting to bud little flowers and peppers (I think!). Hopefully next week I will see a bigger change in those!

Grow grow grow!

The garden is growing like crazy! Most of it, anyway. And even my seed plants are coming up well. I put cages on the tomatoes this week because they are getting so big. I dont have to stake the peppers yet though. I forgot to mention in my earlier posts that I fertilized the garden with Osmocote 14-14-14. I wanted to keep it simple. I am currently doing a bit of research on natural fertilizing during the growing season, as well as pest control in the event that I need it. Anyway, here are photos of the tomato garden and the pepper garden!

And here are a couple of detail shots- the first one is the basil- I actually almost pulled these as weeds but as I started to pull one of the little buds the basil aroma was amazing, so I carefully shoved it back into the dirt. Thankfully there are several coming through, so no harm done. And the second shot is of my squash- I cant believe how big the Honeybear is getting! The Butternut is getting large too, especially considering I planted it from seed. Yay for seeds!

And then.. there is this. I dont know what it is. Is it parsley? I dont think I planted parsley in this location! Is it a weed??? I am going to give it another week and see if I can figure it out. I will try to take better photos next week with my good camera, so far everything has been taken with my cell phone. Yikes!

Modified garden plan.

I am back with my modified garden plan. Over the past week or so I realized the lettuce I planted is not germinating. I think this is because we had a pretty strong rain the day after I planted my seeds (I swear we were only supposed to get an isolated shower!) and they probably washed away. Or I guess the more realistic possibility is that I thought they were a weed and pulled them. Whoops! So, instead I planted a little bit more basil, and am giving the cucumbers some extra room to spread out as they are already getting pretty big. I also realized that somehow, the 4 Early Girl tomato plants were not all actually Early Girls. The 3 on the right are, but the one on the left is different. I am thinking it is perhaps a vining or cherry tomato. I guess only time will tell!

The east garden has remained mostly the same, except instead of the asparagus I planted a cantaloupe! It will be interesting to see how the three large plants (the squashes and cantaloupe) all end up growing together. I am guessing I may have to cage one of them so they can grow up rather than out. We will see!

The garden has been planted.

Yay I got my plants in! And my flowers! There will have to be a slight modification to my garden plan (somewhat expected I think) so I will update you on a couple of changes next. So in the first photo (west garden) we have 4 little tomato plants along the back, and 3 little cucumber plants in front of the tomatoes. Next to the cucumber I planted from seed: basil, lettuce (romaine), and parsley. I learned that I definitely do not like starting from seed! I want the plants to already exist. I know I am going to be checking my garden hourly to see if anything sprouts.

Next up, the east garden (pepper garden) and we have some more flowers, as well as 7 pepper plants! The plant in the middle is a Honeybear squash. Additionally I have a Butternut squash planted in that mound in the back of the photo from seed, and parsley planted from seed. I really hope it grows! I have to modify part of this garden because the asparagus I had planned didnt really pan out. So I am going to think about this a bit and figure out a different plan of action!

The garden plan!

I have finally settled on a garden plan after many mind changes and figuring out what works in Minnesota Wisconsin and what doesn't. The top image is my west garden, and the bottom image is my east garden. Not to be confused, the gardens are right next to each other out in the middle of the horse pasture. I guess they could be the left garden and the right garden. I think I will just call them my tomato garden and pepper garden. Anyway, yes I realize I am slightly psychotic by laying out my garden on a spreadsheet.

Now it is off to Fleet Farm for plants and seeds! Another update coming after everything is in.

I built a garden today.

After much research, I decided to build a garden. Two of them actually, and I think they turned out pretty well! I am going to be journaling my garden adventures this summer so I remember what works and what doesn't. And also so I can remember how much work this was in case nothing grows :-) My basic plan is to follow the Square Foot Garden method. I haven't figured out my exact garden plan yet, but I have the basic layout set. I have two 4' x 8' raised beds, and will be planting flowers in the front row of each bed, with veggies in the back 3 rows. I will be back in a few days with my final planting decisions! (and yes, that is a doggie tail in the first photo.)