An empty garden

I have pulled up the onions and most of the potatoes, leaving a big hole in my garden. The carrots are just waiting to be picked. Although I still have a bunch of tomatoes on the vine, lots of tiny cucumber buds, some tomatillos, the garden feels sort of ... empty.

So, I stopped by the Natural Gardener today and picked up five more melon plants and one Jack pumpkin.

That should fill it in :o)

I have never had much luck with melons.  Every year, I plant a few plants, and I'm lucky if I pull one melon off. But with so much rain and cool weather in the forecast, I thought I'd give it another try this year. 

We'll see.  Most of the plants seem to show a 75 - 85 days to harvest, so we're looking at early to mid-August before we see anything from them.

Hummingbird Moth

Dylan and I saw a crazy looking bee-like moth today on the Lantana.  A little googling quickly identified it as a Hummingbird Moth.

Although the insect looks like a bee and acts like a Hummingbird, it is, in reality, a Moth.  Identifiable by its long antenna. 

Fun!

After the rain

The bi -color iris has never been a favorite of mine, so I was surprised the other day when Kyle pointed out to me, and said it was one of his favorites. This year, it is easy to see why, with all of the rain, they are heavy with blooms - and they look really beautiful.

Today's Harvest

45 onions
1 tomato - the first of the season!

Harvesting potatoes, carrots and onions

It sort of makes me want some stew :o)

The onions started falling over about a week ago.  The notes I read said to let them stay in the ground ten days or so past falling over, so they are probably pretty ready.  I picked about six of them today, and they look great.  I am hoping to get the rest of them up this week.

New Plant and Transplants

With 4 to 12 inches of rain predicted for the upcoming week, it seemed like a good time to put down some new plants, as well as move some existing seedlings.

Crushing blackberries :o(

After babying my blackberries all winter long, fertilizing them, putting Serenade on them, mulching them.. In return I get.... Nothing :o(

About two days ago, I noticed one or two pieces of fruit getting hard spots on them.  It was toward the end, and I figured I just missed them with the Sernade.  The. I looked at them yesterday, and about half of them had it.  I ran over to the NG, tears in my eyes.  He said the canes had a fungus disease called anthracite.  He called the berries mummy berries.  His suggestion was to wait until all the fruit was gone and cut the canes to the ground.  In the meantime, pull off all the mummified fruit.  Well, that is most of it.  And it is sort of hard to tell which ones are mummified, and which are turning black.  I probably pulled off thirty berries... Most of them.  I sprayed the remaining one with a Serenade.  This spread so quickly, I doubt I will get any fruit this year :o(. But maybe I am closer to understanding what is wrong with the plants.

A sad tale.

The first sign of red!

Woot!  The tomatoes I planted on March 7th, showed small fruit on April 15th, are *finally* showing a teeny, tiny bit of red of May 8th. 

This is a very slow process, taking waaaay more time than I have patience for :o)

And, unfortunately, in trying to see if this was really red and not some sort of evil fungus, I knocked one of my other precious tomatoes off the vine.  I am trying to ripen it in a paper bag with a banana... we'll see if it works.

May Showers

We have had one of the rainiest May's on record... and it is only May 6th. Seriously, last night, we had more rain fall then is typical for the entire month.

Of course, it all happened an hour after I had just sprayed all of my plants with a fungicide...  Oh well, I'll always choose rain!  Here is my early May Garden update.