20 Days

This post is for Liliana and Marco. The first photo was taken of their plot on June 6 and the 2nd photo was taken on June 26. What progress!! One zucchini has already been harvested!

My First!

Carrots!

Finally the true leaves from the carrots have revealed themselves! I was getting worried there, I thought it might be just grass growing...but now I know they are carrots. They are slow...

...looks like a stray cucumber got in there....I wonder if I can transplant that...or will it just wither and die...?

update on bird's nest...abandonned..sad.

A Bird's Nest!

I saw a bird fly from it and it was yellow, maybe a goldfinch. You can see the hatched babies in there. If you double click on the photo it will make the photo larger.

OK one bean plant going strong, but what happened to the others? At least one other had sprouted but it is gone now.

Cucumbers were up last Sunday, but now all the leaves are spotted yellow and I found those little yellow and black beetles on the leaves....grrr.

Thanks Dad! Dad made this mighty fine planter for our square garden....next time, I think we'll set up the planter first! Looks good though!

Glorious Sunday!

It was a busy day already at the garden before noon! After all the rain, everyone was checking in on their plots. I met a few new neighbours and have invited them to check out this blog...I have now made this blog public. If you have a garden plot here and want to post your garden exploits, just email me and we will make arrangements. Happy Gardening!

K&S resting before they've even started!

Kevin's eagle eyes spotted this skipper, we chased it until we caught this good photo!

They brought in the barrels of water! I thought they were going to be rain barrels but I guess someone comes out and fills them periodically. It's dip and scoop with these, no spouts...that's OK as long as it is full, when it empties out, someone suggested holding children upside down by the legs and dipping them in...hehehe....a new book "101 uses of a child"...honestly, I love kids, they are very useful!

Houston, we have lift off! go Beans!

Yay, radishes! I planted a few more today, and some more carrots....

The white stuff in the garden is cottonwood seeds. This is the white " summer snow" you see floating around downtown. There a lot of these trees by the river. It is not dandelion fluff. Here's a pic I grabbed off the internet:


The birding was great this morning, too! Spotted a turkey vulture way up high, lots of robins, swallows, and goldfinches. Kevin showed me a bird nest and I hope to go back and get a good photo.

The Others...

Plot #45 continues...

My Dad helping me sift the grass out of the soil. We used these wire mesh trays I got at the dollar store. They work great!

My Dad came out from the suburbs and helped me rough in my garden. Early in the morning we roughed in 2, 4'x4' gardens, following the "square foot gardening" method. What do I know about vegetable gardening? nothing! So after some internet research and getting some books from the library, I found Bartholemew's book. It addressed my concerns of growing too much food, (I don't do preserves) and not enough time to do all the work required... this method offers, so the book says, enough yield with the least amount of work (my kind of thinking, exactly!)





Basically you make a grid out of your garden and plant only what you need, and space your seeds according to the final placement of your veggies, eg 3" apart equals 9 seeds per square foot. It eliminates the thinning and since you are only working with a four foot garden there shouldn't be as much weeding either....well let's hope not...we shall see.

The other rule to this type of gardening, is garden up or vertically. Apparently, you can get a better yield and nicer, straighter looking cucumbers if you grow them up a vine instead of on the ground...so you have got to build a trellis. So after lunch Dad and I headed out to Copps to get what we needed to do that. My Mom came by to supervise and she was quite afraid children were going to get caught in this contraption, which lead to all sorts of jokes of checking to see if we trapped any kids lately...SO KIDS BEWARE OF THE GIANT SPIDER NET! mwahahhaha!

I've place a plastic planter in the corner of my plot to catch rainwater until the barrels (I heard we are eventually getting rain barrels). The white bucket is not mine...

A compost pile has been started at the south east corner for all the grass sifted out of the plots:

All in all, I planted:

marigolds, nasturtiums, 1x pumpkin, 1x eggplant, 2x tomatoes, 1x basil, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, onions, green beans, yellow beans, and zucchini...all I can say is wish me luck!