Crappy Year, How Is Your Garden Doing?

[jdmidwest]

My daughter did not show up till 10:30 this morning, by that time the wind was whipping up around 20 mph and we decided not to go lake fishing. She went to a birthday party, I worked the garden.

The maters needed staking and tying off, some are doing pretty well. Some of the plants were pretty far along when I mudded them in, not too many putting out gardens with all of the rain and cool weather. Some of the plants are blooming and I saw one small tomato already. Peppers are sluggish, they have not done much since planted. Okra, corn, cucumbers, beans, sunflowers, and squash are all up.

The above ground boxes worked well, already harvested radishes a few weeks back and have been picking lettuce for a while. It has been a good year for lettuce as long as I protected it from the pounding rains and hail.

Strawberries were slow this year, alot of rotted berries due to the weather, and something is eating the good ones. Still picking quart every other day.

Rabbit wars have started again, sweet peas were blooming and had pretty vines, but all got munched down this week. 2 rabbits are a little heavier with lead pellets. New fence went up to protect the green beans today, they had eat about half of them off.

Made a new strawberry bed today along with another raised bed for cucumbers or something.

Looks like this week will be dry and hot, maybe about Thursday, I can till the rest of the garden and plant flowers and pole beans.

[ness]

Man, that sounds like tough gardening. Hopefully it'll dry out for you before the summer heat settles in.

We've been cool all May, and just about perfect on rain -- 4 inches MTD, kinda spread out. All my stuff's in raised beds now and that allowed me to start things earlier, and they drain a lot faster. Getting lettuce, radishes, spinach, Swiss chard and snap peas at the moment. Hot season stuff is off to a slower start of course, but tomatoes and peppers are throwing blooms at least. No rabbit issues this year but I've got a cat that likes my new asparagus and raspberry beds. Been using a citronella spray to keep it away, which seems to work for a few days. At least it's staying out of the veggies.

[jdmidwest]

I built another raised bed yesterday, that is the way to go so far. I had lettuce for a family get together 2 weeks ago, only one in a family of gardeners to have any yet.

Your stuff looks pretty good. It has been so cool and wet here, alot of the seed I planted rotted in the ground.

A live trap and a hot dog will take care of that cat problem, what you do with them when you catch them depends on how well you like your neighbors. I have found if you poke them good with a stick several times in the cage and really rile them up, they think twice about coming back again. Dogs are the dumb ones, they don't learn any lessons.

[Quillback]

Been picking broccoli and snap peas here, but this upcoming hot weather will probably put an end to the broccoli. Just planted some pole beans. My container tomatoes are doing well, but the ones in the garden are looking raggedy, but the weather change should be good for them.