Knee High by the 4th of July

Not sure if my corn will be knee high by the 4th, but it is making a good effort. With this week's cooler weather, the corn may stall a little (corn likes it hot and humid as we had last week).

My beans are working to come back after the trimming the rabbits gave them a couple of weeks ago. Thank goodness that they did not totally strip the stalks. The beans I replanted have not produced. I believe that they were washed away with the huge rain we had right after I planted them (this part of the garden had standing water for a couple of days).

My first harvest

I picked my first summer squash on Sunday and will harvest more today. The zucchini will not be far behind.

I will be frying these first pickings tonight for dinner. I slice the summer squash along with onion - then fry them together in olive oil (or if I am really feeling bad - bacon grease) until they are golden brown. ymmmmmm.

Little Green Tomatoes

I found my first little green tomatoes on Sunday. How exciting! I noticed that some of my tomato plants are showing stress, I need to do some reseach to see if there is anything I should be doing. I think the answer will be that I need to do some watering in the raised beds between rains.

More Pictures from Italy

As promised....here a few more pictures from Italy (these were taken in Rome)...more to come. Enjoy!

Weeds

I have made an awesome discovery, well in my world it is awesome, that a planting bed that was taken over by weeds, once you clean them out.....they do not give up the fight....lol.

My herb garden in point. The plant bed I made into my herb garden was waist high with weeds when I started. I dug up the weeds and cleared out as much of the roots as I could. Added a couple bags of new garden soil and peat moss. But each day as I go out to survey my little garden delights, I see to my horror new weeds have also popped up. But what the weeds to not know, is the fact that I have too much "Tuttle stubbornness" in me to give up the fight. So each day (when it is not storming), I have been trying to spend at least 1-2 hours working on fighting the weeds and cleaning my gardens. I decided on this amount of time for three reasons. 1 - I need sun on my legs which are still a little white - but as you may have noticed when I was in Italy I burn easily and should not over do the exposure. 2 - the time seems manageable to me - not too much that I feel overwhelmed by it or I will die if I put in the time. And finally 3 - I need the exercise - 1-2 hours of bending and stretching and pulling and raking is good for me without me doing the "old lady" walk in the morning.

Getting back to the weeds and the planting beds, as I was just out pulling up weeds, enjoying the sounds of the birds at the feeder, the warmth of the sun and the smell of my flowering honeysuckle, I began to ponder the weeds as a metaphor for life. Ok, I know I'm going "deep" here, but please bear with me...as you clean out areas of your life from the weeds, the weeds don't give up real easily - it takes daily tending before you can "win" over the bed - and daily tending before you have won over the area of your life you are trying to change.

Thanks for visiting...happy gardening!

Under Water

Rain, Rain go away....Thanks to the last few days of storms, the back side of my vegetable garden is a little under water. I think it should drain enough by tomorrow so I can get back into it and push down the beans that I just planted (I can see some seeds that have floated up). The good news is that since we have been able to keep the rabbits out of the garden with the fence, most of the beans that have been nibbled on are coming back.

I am also very excited to see all my tomato plants now are in bloom and I have several summer squash (each around 1 - 3" long). I may be harvesting from the garden within the next couple of weeks. As I do, I will share some recipes with you.

So far, the kitty litter test is working. I've found a bunny sitting in my flower bed, but they are eating the seeds that have dropped from the bird feeder and not my plants. I told Bill, I think I should put some fresh "used" kitty litter (that always makes me laugh) back around my flowers since we have had so much rain.

My Garden in Bloom

Rabbits...part 2

I did some research last night (what did we do before Goggle?) and found a suggestion of using "used" kitty litter around the garden really helps with keeping the rabbits at bay, though almost everyone said a fence was the only main hope. I guess after seeing these comments, I am glad we put the money into the fence... so, back to the kitty litter idea. Since I have 2 kitties who love to use their litter boxes - I have an unending supply of "used" kitty litter. I visited the litter boxes last night and acquired some "used" litter and promptly scattered it around my flower beds and along the outside of the fenced in vegetable garden. So far (knock on wood) I have not seen a rabbit around my flowers or the garden. There just was a big fat bunny sitting in the middle of the yard (which I don't mind them eating grass and clover), but he hopped off through the bushes - perhaps he knew he was being watch...hmmm. I'll keep you updated if this works. I do have one question, since it rained all day do I need to re-scatter fresh "used" litter...is that an oxymoron? Time will tell.

Pesky Rabbits

As any gardener will tell you, there are always challenges with each garden...either it rains too much, or not enough, too cool or too hot, and insects. My challenge this year is to grow my garden despite all the rabbits eating everything I've planted. I've lost one tomato plant, my green beans, sunflowers, all the zinnias, and saliva to the nibbling of several well fed rabbits.

So..... off to the garden shop I go to replace what has been eaten and find something to deter the bunnies. I have bought - a spray liquid fence ($13) and a granule product ($15) that the garden shop guy said would really work, I hedged my bet with marigolds and a whole jar of cayenne pepper, which are rumored to work also. Guess What! These rabbits must love spicy food and do not care if they smell blood....Nothing has worked. Even as I type this I see two bunnies sitting outside my flowerbed munching away. I've shooed them off three times while I am writing, now I just threw one of my gardening shoes at them.

My next solution was to fence in my vegetable garden ($80), I can live without the flowers - but I was really putting a lot of stock into our vegetable garden putting fresh vegetables on our table this summer and canning some beans and tomatoes for winter. Bill and Andrew worked Sunday afternoon putting it up (don't they look great working hard...). I think they did a good job. Bill caught one rabbit inside the fenced area, and after chasing it around about 4 times, it finally showed him where it had came in under the fence. Bill piled a lot of dirt around the hole, and so far it does not look like they have dug through it.

What's next??? Does anyone have a good receipe for rabbit stew???

Herb Garden

When we moved in, there was a planting bed right beside the potting shed. I did not do anything with it last summer, but had plans to make it into an Herb Garden this summer. Once I was done planting the vegetable garden, I started on the Herbs. It was a project! The bed was over grown and everything had to be cleared out. I was surprised how big the bed grew once I cleared all the grass and weeds out. The bed has a galvanized boarder that someone before me had put in which made it easy to find the edge.

I plant several of my favorite herbs, including 7 plants of lavender (I had heard once, that you should plant lavender by your garden gate for luck...needing all the luck I can get - I went for the special number of 7...lol).

This last weekend, I finished the bed off with some dark brown mulch. I left a lot of room for the herbs to spread since they should come back year after year. I also want to find a cute statuary to put in the bed for decoration.

Planting

As I noted in my last post, Bill built the raised beds for me while I was away in Italy (what a great guy!). Over the Memorial Day Weekend I filled the beds for dirt and planted everything.

I planted plants of: tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, eggplants, zucchini, and summer squash. And seeds of: pumpkins, green beans, corn and sunflowers. Bill had wanted me to plant onions, but I found out when I was looking for onion bulbs that they were sold out since they were to be planted at the beginning of May and not at the end of May. The garden was really beginning to take shape.

Moving On

Dear Bloggers -
As many of you know, when I returned home from my beautiful Italian Vacation, on my first day back to work (actually within the first 45 minutes) was I told that my position at work was being eliminated. I would work until June 26th and then be done. This was just a major shock to me to say the least. And because of this sudden change in my life, I did not get back to my blog to let everyone know that we had returned home ok...which we did. I will work to post some more pictures as the summer goes along...between Vanessa and I we had over 1600 pictures! Lots to pick from.

It appears that most want us to travel to Ireland in 2011, which is very exciting. I've been doing some research and found you can actually stay in castles there...would that not be too much fun!!

Now, for my summer plans. Bill and I bought this wonderful house last summer. It was too late in the season to really do anything with the flower beds, plus I was neck deep in school work. I planted tulips and daffodils in the fall and was planning on doing more gardening when I came home from Italy. After doing some research, we decided to build a raised bed vegetable garden. They are easier to maintain and they look pretty. We had a large area in our back yard plowed up for the garden and decided to build 2 beds and just plant the back area this year. This leaves us room to build either one large bed or 2 smaller ones for next year (they are not cheap to build or fill). Bill had the bed frames built when I got home and over Memorial day weekend I filled them with dirt, peat, and more dirt.

Now that I am going to have even more time on my hands this summer than expected, I am going to really make this a summer project to see what I can grow along with blogging and keeping you all up on my successes and not-so-successes.

Soooo....let the summer gardens project begin!!