The Garden - As It Stands Today

Finally, we are caught up to the present state of things. I still have some weeding to accomplish, along with finding a possible new leak, and lots of other smaller projects to tidy up the backyard. However, here is a peek at the current progress of some of the plants:

The Garden - As It Stands Today...

 Here's a view of the watermelon plant, continuing to grow and flower. It now fills the entire box. The exciting part however, can be spotted in this picture, and seen more closely right below...

That's right, there is a watermelon growing on that vine! Finally after a few years of failure in growing watermelon (none of which lasted much beyond sprouting of the watermelon seeds) I have some watermelon plants that have grown into large vines, and that are now growing actual watermelon. Now the hard part is waiting until it has grown ripe, to see if this watermelon will turn out to be juicy and sweet...

Here we have another planted that I have tried to grow before and until now have been unsuccessful. This year the sunflowers I planted are actually growing, and are almost half-way up the wall. Not only will it be nice to have some sunflowers in the yard, but hopefully I can get some seeds from them this year too, although I suppose I'd be happy to just have them flower.

For some reason, plants on the right side of the yard tend to not do so well, and plants on the left tend to thrive. This year, oddly enough the sunflower and grape vine on the right side of the yard are thriving, and the ones on the left are just ok. The garden boxes with actual plants growing are also on the right side of the yard...

Here we have a nice view of the grapevine that has climbed up over the wall into our neighbor's yard. Perhaps I should prune it a bit. Once again this year no grapes were harvest, as the chickens love to eat the unripe grapes right as soon as the form. This winter I'll be needing to get some trellis for the vines to grow on, and then devise a method of keeping the chickens out of the grape vines...

Start of Summer

Summer has begun, and with it some fairly high temperatures. Sadly, as a result, none of the green beans survived, nor the calendula or the summer squash (although the winter squash appears to be thriving, how ironic). Also, a combination of chickens and lawn mower have sadly ended the surprise the mystery plants growing in the grass presented.

The Japanese red kuri squash is starting to give in to the summer heat, much like it did last year. Hopefully it survives long enough to produce some squash perfect for pumpkin pie. If not, then I will have learned that this one is easier to plant in the late fall and let over winter with the mild winters here.







Here we have an heirloom variety of winter squash the is doing quite well, and continues to get larger each day. Knowing from past experience that summer heat does not treat most plants nicely here, you can see the shade cloth draped over top that has kept the sun from drying out the leaves.

Here is the zucchini, still doing well for now, and starting to grow some zucchinis as well. I'll be needing to find some more uses for zucchini soon, as I have discovered that quite a lot of zucchini remains in the freezer from previous harvests (along with a bunch of anaheim peppers I got from a couple pepper plants that lasted a full two years).

 Here we have the cantaloupe enjoying the warmth of the summer, starting to flower. The only issue now is to keep the chickens from taking their dirt baths in this garden box. I find so long as I keep the soil moist, the chickens tend to avoid taking their dirt baths here, the trick is to not keep the dirt too moist for the plant.

And last, but not least, we have the watermelon plant here. The last couple years I have had absolutely no success in growing watermelon, but continued to try again in hopes of growing my own. After all, my grandpa got a nice, juicy and sweet watermelon from a stray seed. After eating some watermelon, a seed one of the seeds ended up growing a thriving watermelon plant. Now to hope that these watermelon plants continue to thrive as well...

Last of all, I have noticed from these pictures that I am quite behind in my weeding. Sadly, I am not much of one for hot weather, so little to no yard work is done by me during the summer. However, I suppose I should see about getting some of the weeding done during the early morning...

More Sprouting, and Some Unexpected Strays

Some Summer Squash Sprouting

Zucchini - Doing Quite Well

Watermelon - Yay!

Hyssop and Calendula Sprouting

Mystery Plants

Here we have some mystery plants growing on the lawn. This happened as a result of the chickens. See, every time we get a squash, cantaloupe, etc to eat, the pulp and seeds scraped from the insides are left outside for the chickens to eat. Apparently not all of the seeds were eaten, and so there are now some mystery squash / honeydew / cantaloupe / who knows plants growing in the middle of the backyard lawn. Oh well...

Some Sprouting

At this point in the year I had finished all of the planting, which included a few varieties of squash, some green beans, watermelon, cantaloupe, a couple sunflowers, and miscellaneous herbs. The first couple squash plants have finally sprouted (took a while), and here they are:

Zucchini

Japanese Red Kuri Squash

Getting Started on Spring

For the past couple of years I have had the goal of starting and maintaining a garden from which I could harvest a fair amount of produce. The first year was mostly experimenting with different plants, trying things out, figuring out how gardening works (which I continue to learn more about to this day). That first year had a small, but decent harvest, and the yard looked nice and green. However, last year I took quite a while building raised garden beds, and so not much was grown. This year, then, becomes the year that I will get back on track with this home garden.

Spring planting did not go as well as planned, and so my focus will be on tending the plants I did manage to plant until they are harvested, and then preparing for fall / winter planting (luckily I live where it is possible to plant just about year-round, and so it is possible to have a couple growing seasons a year) . To keep myself motivated, I'll be posting updates here every so often, with these first few back-dated posts (it's currently June) serving to update on the year up 'till now...

3-21-2011

Garlic Plants

At the beginning of winter last year I planted some garlic in this box right here. Only of few of them actually grew, and fewer became of any decent size before the summer heat forced me to harvest them. I'm thinking it had to do with the soil becoming really hard as time went on... Just a guess though...

Left Side of Yard

Here we have a lovely view of the left side of the yard, all torn up to find and repair a leak in the water pipes. The plants also look pretty dead after winter, and I haven't gotten around to trimming up the bushes yet... I should probably finish that up some time soon...
Anyways, I did manage to get the leak fixed, but recently it appears that a new leak has formed.

Chickens

and Chickens Again

Here we have the wonderful egg-producing, pest control force of the backyard. The main downside is keeping them from eating the veggies.

Right Side of Yard

This is a view of the right side of the yard, where we have the garden boxes being prepared for planting. The one on the bottom right is already planted with zucchini, red kuri squash and green beans. The other boxes got planted over the next few weeks (I got busy with school work).

Some Pots - I'll find something to fill them with... Eventually...