Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

How does your garden grow?

Oh MY!

This is how my garden is growing!

This garden of mine is keeping me super busy!  It always does this time of year.  For several weeks we were in desperate need of rain.  Then last Monday we got around 1 1/2 inches when a super strong storm blew through our area.  All the tall corn you see in the above picture was blown flat to the ground and some of my other plants took a beating too.  But, nothing was pulled out of the ground or shredded.  Thank You, LORD! The boys and I were able to hill up the soil around the corn and stand it all back up.

Before the rains came I had a good handle on all the weeds… Now it is another story!  They, too, enjoy all the rain. And the heat that has followed has everything growing at top speed. I am spending hours each morning in the garden hoeing and pulling weeds. I’m not sure who is winning at this point.

 

I took this picture of my baby beans last week.  Monday morning I had my first picking and I got a huge bowl full!  I will be freezing portions or the next pickings, but the first picking always gets totally devoured by my human eating machines!

 

 

I have lots of blossoms on my cucumbers!  We have eaten about 6 of them and this week. Tomorrow, I will pick as many small ones as I can, combine it with the beautiful dill in my garden, the few remaining garlic cloves from last years harvest, and can a batch of Kosher Dill Pickles

Last year was our first year to try Eggplant!  I had never had it before, but I always like to plant something new each year. WELL,  Eggplant was a winner with us.  So,  it made a comeback this year in the form of six plants instead of two.  In the above picture you can see all of the sandy soil that got splattered up on the plant from all the hard rain. 

The majority of our garden is a super soft and sandy soil.  Which I am thankful for since many gardeners in our area deal with hard clay.  One corner and edge of our garden does get a bit hard and has much more clay in it, but each winter we dump all the manure and straw from the rabbit barn onto the garden and it is really improving our soil.

 

I, of course, have to have tomatoes! I have 16 plants set out.  Our plan was to put these into raised beds this year, but we didn’t get them prepared in time.  The reason for the raised beds is that we have a fungus in our soil that causes Septoria Leaf Spot on our tomatoes.  What this fungus ends up doing is destroying the whole tomato plant, horribly limiting my yields. Every year I fight it and every year I lose.  All the time and energy I spend babying the plants, trying to keep them up off the ground, mulching, picking off infected leaves and branches, is usually to no avail.  We had tried every spot in our garden trying to get away from the fungus, except the hard clay portion.  This year we stuck them there out of desperation.  I have been keeping thick layers of straw under them. I’m not staking them, because I told Joel to just forget putting up the wire fencing, since I JUST knew they would go KA-PUT mid-season. But, you know what, so far, they are thriving!  I haven’t noticed any spots on the leaves.  I am praying for a successful year with my tomatoes!  It would be the first in 9 years!

So, although my name isn’t Mary and I’m really not contrary

And,

I don’t have any silver bells, cockle shells or pretty maids in a row, I do have these.

 Hollyhocks

And my garden is growing quite well, thank you!