Back to the Garden.

It's time to talk about life. Garden life!  Our garden is going strong, most things have been in the ground for at least two weeks, the seeds were put in several weeks ago. I've also been planting a fair number of flowers. Many of them were ordered in the dead of winter and I'd half forgotten about them. I also ordered some transplants and they arrived several weeks ago. It makes for a pleasant surprise when you get home to a box labeled "live plants - open immediately" hee hee. I've had 5 of those in the last few weeks.

I tested both the native soil and the garden soil we ordered for pH, nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. The results were pretty good. Unfortunately I left the final reading on the purchased soil to my husband so that I could get to the barn instead of waiting for the soil to settle out of the water. He accidentally over-wrote the new soil results where I had the native soil results recorded. In any case, I know the new soil has a surplus of potassium and is slightly deficient in nitrogen. One of these days I'll retest.

Now, the list!
I lost track of how many plants of each variety were planted since many of the decisions were made last minute based on plant health. I try to be a good record keeper but don't always succeed!

Tomatoes
   - 2 large varieties, one is early maturing
   - Italian plum variety
   - small cherry/grape, red
   - small cherry/grape, golden

Peppers

    -2 large varieties, one globe, one long type that is early maturing
    - several hot varieties: jalapeno, cherry bomb, and a really neat type called "burning ember". They have purple leaves and the peppers are purple and mature red.

**You click on the pictures for better, larger versions.**

Beets - red and gold

Carrots

 

Swiss Chard - kaleidescope (multi-coloured)
Cucumber - small, pickle type
Beans - these were given to me by a neighbour. He is a lovely old Italian gentleman whose English isn't strong and I have a hard time understanding him, so I don't really know what kind of beans they are. Pretty sad since I grew up being close with my Italian grandparents and could understand Italian no problem as a kid. Bah!
Garlic - I planted some last fall and spring garlic recently. I have never grown it so this is an experimental year (ha, what isn't!).

Ground cherries

Currants - red and black

Raspberries

Blueberries - highbush

I also have corn which has not been planted. I don't know if it's too late, if not I might plant it this weekend. Oh, and some strawberries arrived today. No idea where I'm going to put them.

You might have seen the beds when they were empty and serving as jumps for Hazel. After that, my DH ripped up the grass (which we used elsewhere) and loaded the beds with the new garden soil.  We looped a soaker hose through each bed to make watering easy and to eliminate loss to evaporation. That was then topped with garden cloth that is permeable to water.

One bed, marked out for planting.

Then planted & layered with cedar mulch.

The three main beds. Near to far: 

Cucumber, carrots & beets. Large peppers. Large tomatoes.

Some of you might remember that when I moved in last year we had a bit of an earwig problem. Well, I haven't seen a single one this year but we have ants. Make that ANTS!!!!!  Like nothing I've ever seen. And there are a few different types. I joked to friends last year that we killed the earwigs and the ants took over. I thought I was kidding, but it's true. 


We've been trying the boiled water routine with one particularly large nest that isn't near plants. There are still plenty of live ants, only now they are busy removing carcasses from the nest. I did another round of ant drops today (boric acid solution) in several places and it appears to be successful in that the ants are going for it. 

One type of ant eating their last supper (I hope!).

Found this plant almost buried in some false sunflowers 

(which are very tall and pretty late summer). 

It is called 'Mountain bluet' and it is just gorgeous.