Redemption

Well, reader, I redeemed myself somewhat in the garden this afternoon. 

Ran the tiller, re-planted the green beans and some of the purple hull peas.  Planted a few hills of crookneck squash.  Hit the first few rows with Miracle Grow.

Can barely move now.

Worst Gardener Ever!

When I checked the garden last week, it was grassy and pitiful, and I made plans to remedy that situation this weekend.  Although I was up before the sun, it was late in the morning by the time I finally dragged myself to the garden. 

What a mess!

The original plan was to crank up the little tiller and use it to take out the weeds closest to the plants, then do the middles with the big tiller.  However, the previous tilling had left mounds and trenches that impeded the little tiller's progress, so I swapped tillers to do the middles first, then go back with the little tiller. 

The truth is that my heart just wasn't in it.  When I started, it was already putrid hot, but there was a cloud cover, so the job wasn't too bad.  About 45 minutes into the job the sun came out in full force.  I worked for another few minutes then shut the machinery down and came back to the house, intending to go back in the late afternoon, when the garden would be shady.  The return trip never happened.

None of the plants look very athletic.  Because of all the rain, everything is stunted and yellow.  I don't know if fertilizing would help or hurt, but something needs to be done.  The thing is, I am currently too lazy to do it.

Three Week Checkup

It's been about three weeks since we planted our vegetable garden.  I have not kept track of how many rain-free days we've had since then, but it hasn't been many. 

The nine cabbages that I planted in early April sat there like knots on a log, doing nothing, for the longest time, like they were fake cabbage sets.  When we planted the rest of the garden in late May, we dosed them with some fertilizer, and for a couple of weeks they grew like crazy.  They were fine until last week, when all nine of them suddenly went limp at the same time.  I think they are drowning.

Some of the tomatoes look great, but a few of them died, and a few others look blighted.  I am going to spray them with the baking soda/vegetable oil/water mixture that I used last year.

The squash plants are a little pale and sickly - too wet.

One end of my garden has a "dip" in it, and water tends to pool in that area.  For the past couple of autumns, we've dumped load after load of fallen leaves on that end of the garden, hoping to build it up, and for the past couple of springs, no seeds have sprouted there.  Last year, I thought the sprouting failure was because the soil stayed too wet for too long.  Since then I've learned that it's not a good idea to till those un-decomposed leaves into the soil, as it robs the soil of...something.  This year, I tried to rake the leaves away from the rows before I tilled them, but still nothing sprouted on that end of the garden, as if the soil has been poisoned.  I don't know what to do about this, except to stop dumping leaves in the garden.  I suppose I'll try to re-plant the seeds once the soil dries up enough to work.  Who knows when that will be?!

For now, the cucumbers and okra are doing okay.

The pepper plants are showing off.  They're already loaded with peppers.  I will have to stake them soon or risk having them topple over from the weight.

The newspaper/straw treatment is doing a good job of keeping down the weeds in the "no-till" half of the garden.  The other half of the garden is hairy with grass, but there's not much I can do about it until the ground dries.

This is not exactly garden news, but we have inherited a cat.  We had a cat, "Lucy" (short for "Lucifer") for years.  Although she was an extremely picky eater (nothing but canned shredded turkey & cheese cat food for Her Highness), she was a great rodent hunter, but she disappeared a couple of years ago.  Truth be told, we did not miss having a pet, as we like to travel and hated to ask the neighboring relatives to feed Lucy while we were gone.  But late this winter, we discovered that BOTH of our vehicles had become homes to rodents.  I found mouse poop in the front seats of my Jeep, and something chewed some wires in The Husband's truck.  I put a box of mouse poison under the rear seat of my Jeep and figured the problem was solved.  But about two weeks ago, I found more poop in the Jeep.  When I checked the rear storage compartment, I found a mouse nest!  We removed the nest and set a mouse trap in the compartment.  Evidently, removing the nest temporarily alleviated the problem, for the mouse trap has not been sprung, but I know it's just a matter of time before another mouse discovers the hide-away. 

Enter "Tiger."  Tiger is a full-grown male cat, orange and white, tall and sleek.  He's a card-carrying hunter, I'm told, and he eats what he catches.  When my son and daughter-in-law acquired some chickens this spring, Tiger watched them with longing in his eyes.  His family decided he needed to go before he developed a taste for chicken, and we agreed to take him, both to cut down on the rodent problem in our yard and to keep him available to our grandson.  They brought him to us yesterday afternoon.  I figured that he would immediately run home (through the woods, it's not all that far from our yard to Tiger's former home), but he's still here this morning.

So, welcome Tiger.  Now, get busy catching those mice!