Yesterday I started to hoe the sunflower bed and I realized I had better stop because there are some seedlings coming up (not just the bindweed)! I did start putting the compost out in that bed. I hate leaving bare soil! It’s really causing a sow bug problem in the strawberries, though! I think the first sunflowers are the 2 year-old Mammoth ones. The potatoes I planted have also started to come up, as well as the corn and beans.

I need to take out the bell beans that are growing in the newer strawberry beds, but check out all these ladybugs!

This morning I was finally ready to plant more potatoes, and then I realized that all but 2 of the seeds were a bit too squishy. I threw those into the green waste bin along with some bermudagrass. :p I am hoping to get some local potatoes from a guy who lives a couple of towns north of here. He grows a lot of perennials and weird plants. I first met him at a farmers market. 🙂

Today I did a fair bit of thinning of my earlier corn plantings. It’s painful to get rid of what are mostly beautiful, healthy plants (although they were hosting an awful lot of cucumber beetles. need to put those traps out), but hopefully things will get better in terms of pests. maybe i can hide some flower seeds in there. Of course I finished thinning after I’d started a new compost pile! Oh, well.

I need to fertilize. I think Z’s been watering a bit too long (it’s hard because he usually goes and does other stuff while the water is on) and things are a tad bit yellow.

The strawberries get soft too quickly. I think it’s partly just the humidity level in the refrigerator. 😦

 

For over a decade I’ve read in Acres USA magazine that you should feed the soil, not the plants. Yet I find myself using a lot of compost when I plant, and even as mulch afterwards, which attracts all manner of bugs – in particular, sow bugs. They love that decomposing stuff. They, along with the slugs, boxelder bugs, etc, etc love to eat my berries because they touch the ground (or weeds) and are easy to get to. Then my fruit is soft, plus maybe my fridge needs adjusting (well, it needs new seals), and then the strawberries can’t even be stored in the refrigerator for 26 hours. 😦

Those 2 baskets of Chandlers never got eaten, and I only got 1 that was not too soft. 😦 I cut it and the berries I picked tonight and froze them. That’s all I can do. I hope someone helps me make jam, because I am too clumsy to try to do it myself!

All I did in the garden today was work on strawberries. Well, I also tried planting some zinnia seed in the sunflowers (well, the cucumbers) and in the tomato bed. I also tried taking old flowerheads off of the borage from the strawberries and scattering the seeds on top of the tomato bed. I’m getting really into the concept of companion planting, but I’m a bit slow to implement it. I got a new book about companion planting that I’ll write more about another time, and I’m reading a really basic intro kindle book at the moment.

We are way behind on planting cover crops. I have tons of seeds to plant! I guess I have 2 available beds right now, but we need to prep some others. And I can’t just mow down the cover crops and plant into the residue, because that just encourages the slugs. Sigh!

I just watched what I think was a swallowtail butterfly wandering around the garden looking for something it liked. All that’s flowering in there is strawberries, bindweed, maybe some lambsquarters, maybe a tomato, and a couple of purple green beans. 😦 I have a really hard time getting small-seeded plants, esp. flowers, to germinate. It’s odd that I just last night wrote about needing to plant more flowers. I guess it’s not that odd.

I do have yarrow and calendula that I planted. There are so many other places where I’ve tried to plant either annuals or wilflower mixes, and I guess the soil wasn’t prepared the way they like it, the water wasn’t right, or it wasn’t the correct time of year. I meant to put some dill in  with the greens last week, but it didn’t happen. Maybe this weekend.

Yay, the potatoes that Z planted last week are sending out some leaves! We still haven’t finished planting them all, but what are ya gonna do?

 

Tonight I did finish transplanting the tomatoes, the peppers, and most of the purple basil. It made me feel so productive! I also transplanted a nasturtium T started at school (though when he brought it home it was unclear if there were actually any seeds in it, so I had put in a few old nasturtium seeds that I had, lol) into the broccoli bed. The weeds over there have really taken off this week. I’ve got to get in there with some serious tools. The little hoe I used last week didn’t do such a great job on the larger weeds that were in the corn and beans.

I picked almost 2 baskets of old strawberries tonight. They look pretty good! I ate some of the slightly-soft ones as I was picking and they tasted ok. I have been trying to check the Chandlers twice a day because they have been getting these big bite marks on them. I would almost think it’s a gopher, but it could also be ravens.

Here’s one of our beds of greens from this morning. The chard is in the other bed, and it’s getting quite big. The collard plant that grew back in the eastern greens bed from last winter is also doing quite well. I looked for collards at the farm supply store this weekend and either there weren’t any or they looked terrible. I forget which!

Today Z went back to the farm supply store because we realized that I’d been charged for 10 six-packs instead of 2. There was a long line the first time he went, and then the 2nd time he and the manager had some trouble communicating. The guy printed out the long version of the receipt so he could see the longer descriptions of things that had been confusing (I think it said 4-pack for the 4″ pots or something). Z wasn’t sure about things, so he left without money. He got chided for us not checking the receipt (hello, toddler!) and for not putting it on our account to get the discount. I thought I had told the woman our account name, but oh, well. So now I have to try to find the time to drive out there and deal with this… good thing we’re not relying on the farm and my 2 hours a day in the field for money!