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...