Garden Diary

One of the best parts about this time of the year is what little time we spend inside.  No matter what we're doing, we just enjoy being outdoors.  I realized recently that Travis and I spend more "quality" time together late Spring through Summer than we do any other time of the year.  We work as a team, gardening and processing, trying to produce some of what we consume. 

Since the last post on June 3rd the garden has hit several growth spurts.  Plus we planted another 4 rows of corn, roughly 3 weeks later so that we have corn late into the summer!  We've picked our first snap peas with broccoli and cabbage not far behind.  Tomatoes are coming along nicely, some of the most beautiful plants we've ever had, thanks to Travis' experiments.  Beets and Carrots won't be ready for awhile, but the beet greens taste awfully good!

In the past two weeks Travis has been working to get the automated irrigation system up and running, we made the finishing touches this week by laying the drip tape.  Each row of our garden can be watered separately if necessary, but more impressively, just the plants are being watered, not the weeds or in between rows.  Getting the irrigation finished was just in time for the first day of summer along with hot dry conditions.  Our peas have already thanked us by looking much perkier than before.  All the squash and zucchini are growing well and we now have a leaning cow panel for our cucumbers to climb.

In the up coming weeks/weekends to-do list is stringing the green beans, they are roughly 3" out of the ground and need stringing up so they have something to climb and keep them organized.  Weeding is an ongoing process as well as picking raspberries.  We are up to about 2 gallons of raspberries picked, easily, and that's just the start of it.  It is time to sew new lettuce seeds and hope that the slug bait will keep away those slimy buggers. 

There is always something going on at the Birdsell residence and although some days are long, gardening keeps us happy and healthy.