May Garden Update

This has not been my most successful garden this year :o( Maybe it is the excess of rain, I don't know, but I haven't gotten much. I guess every garden has good years and off years. As always, my goal is to learn from this year so next year is better, right?



Onions
The first four or five onions in my main garden began to topple over this week. According to my notes, I should wait for most of them to topple over and then I should start topple the rest over, wait ten days and then pull them. Looking at the calendar, I'm thinking I will be pulling them out of the ground around May 20th.  My plan is to compost the soil fully, and replant the area with sweet potatoes

The onions is the outer bed are very small, and the leaves are starting to brown. I am not expecting much from that bed.

Cilantro
I like to let the cilantro reseed each year, so I have a large crop the following year.  Unfortunately, I let me crop get too big this year, and it is taking over a lot of fertile, usable soil space.  Next year, I think I will keep the cilantro more contained!

Tomatoes
I have eaten three or four cherries tomatoes, and they were fantastic!  Thee of the four plants have one or two tomatoes on them, but they are not really thriving.  They have a number of yellowing leaves.  I took them to NG, and was told that they have blight. So I pruned the yellowing leaves off the plant, and sprayed them completely with Serenade.  I will spray again on Thursday, and then keep up with a weekly spraying of Serenade.

Cucumbers
The cucumbers all came up, and were not eaten by bugs or animals.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that they also were looking sickly and spotty.  I also took them to NG and was told they had mites :o(. I sprayed them down with BioNeem, and will spray them again on Thursday.  I also gave them a dose of John's recipe to help them recover, hopefully.

Potatoes
Seriously, nothing is doing well in the garden.  These also have blight.  I lost all of my fingerling potatoes, and the ones in the outside garden are starting to look like they might go as well.  I did spray them with Serenade and gave them two doses of John's recipe, hoping they will revive.

We were short on potatoes for hash browns on Sunday, so I pulled a few up to see what I might have. Each plant had one measly little potato on it, though there were some tiny ones that looked like they might be starting to grow.  I guess they are not ready to be harvested yet.  I am not sure they will live long enough to be harvested, with the blight attacking and more rain coming.

Cantaloupe and Melons
They have sprouted and are starting to get their second set of leaves.  They are still very small, though.

Strawberries
The plants are finally starting to get a little bigger and look nice and healthy... but it is the end of the growing season for them. With the warm weather ahead, I don't expect to harvest many more strawberries.  In all, I only pulled two or three strawberries at a time, and many of them were bug eaten. Another garden 2016 failure :o(