updatey update!

[gryphynshadow.livejournal.com]

Gardening continues apace...

Having our houseguest here in July helped kickstart the fall garden, and also helped with cleaning up the backyard. But, even with the houseguest gone, work still continues in the backyard!

Last month I cleared out the bed in the backyard previously known as the bed of doom. It was the big one in the middle, with the giant honeysuckle/virginia creeper combo in the middle. It was a tangled mass of dead and living vines, roughly five and a half feet tall and five feet in diameter. Surrounding that was an expanse of weeds two feet tall, throughout the bed. We're talking bed of doom here, folks.

Well, it took me two days, but I pulled all the weeds, chopped down the vine, and took out the half rotted post the vine had been growing up. In the process, I found 11 lantanas, the succulent I transplanted at the beginning of the year, and a tropical bush thing. Oh, and the graves for the two pets buried in there.

After I got the bed cleaned out, I started to break up the soil. I pulled more roots from that bed... I used a shovel to break up the soil, and brought in more sandy soil from the pile of extra dirt. I mixed in compost, and created a raised row in the center. This row has been planted with potatoes and garlic, of which the garlic has come up. I feel encouraged by this, and am contemplating putting more garlic in there. (I only like garlic just a little bit, honest.)

The side bed is doing well, but I can see that the soil fertility there is very hit and miss. Some of the cucumber I planted over on that side are doing really well, some are not. A couple of the okras are looking nice, the others are shorter. (And the really odd part is that the bed with the happy cucumber has the sad okra.)

Last week, as a part of our homeschooling efforts, I had Peaches help me put more compost around the plants in the EarthBoxes. And I'm pleased to report that those plants are looking much happier now. The tomatoes even have some flowers on them! And the jalepeno that won't die is blooming again, too.

All the beans have come up, and are doing well. The pole beans have climbed to the tops of their tripods already, and are coming back down for a second pass. The bush beans are up, but aren't putting on many leaves yet. I think they may need more supplemental water.

I've been getting okra pods from the older okra plants in the backyard for a month now. I think that in order to get the sort of crop I want, I'll need to plant more than I did this year. Here's hoping we get the garden beds in for the spring!

The okras are overshadowing the zucchini plants, I think. The zukes aren't looking too good back there. They're kinda white looking, and haven't put on any blooms at all. Speaking of not looking good, the other squashes back there are looking peaked, too. I think they're crowded, because the ones that were more spaced out are looking better.

I also suspect that the pest control treatment did something to the beneficial bugs in that bed. It's just a hunch, based mainly in the fact that when I was digging in the bed of doom, I found lots of bugs and critters in the soil, but the beds next to the house, while providing an awesome home to lizards and toads, don't have many bugs crawling in there. The cure for this, of course, is to put in beds away from the house, and use the beds next to the house for ornamentals.

I just took a bunch of pictures of the garden, so look for a fun update with pics soon!