I've been failing miserably to keep up with this blog. The only thing I can say in my defense is that actually DOING the garden has taken priority over writing about it. One side of the hoop house is entirely planted. The other side is half weeded. The rest of the weeding needs to be finished, the entire side double dug, and the manure needs to go in. Getting the irrigation system to the trees and the hoop house by Friday has taken priority over that. Next week is supposed to be dry, and windy, when it isn't in the upper 80s.
On the planted side of the hoop house, the peas and rhubarb are doing great. The second and third plantings of radishes are up (I gave up on the square foot spacing and went with rows because the seeds are old and the germination rate was low - planting every inch in rows four inches apart has gotten me enough radishes that I will thin them once, hopefully tomorrow, and eat those as greens, then wait for the rest to actually be radishes. We ate the four radishes we got from the first square-foot. NONE of the carrots (any of the three plantings) has come up. Admittedly, those seeds were old, too. Or it could be Ph level - which I didn't check (something else to do tomorrow, now that I have a tester). The kohlrabi is doing fine since I covered it with chicken wire to keep out whatever little beastie was chomping all the leaves. We've harvested a bagful of spinach (the regular kind) that we need to finish before Friday. The leaves are huge - I won't wait that long to harvest them again, because I like baby spinach best. A few of the early beans actually came up - more will be planted tomorrow and/or the first week of June, along with more Malabar Spinach, since the cold nights took out most of that. Two of the cukes (the big ones under the cloches) are doing okay. The rest are dead. Some of the gourds are okay, but I don't know which are which (someone mixed up my labels when they were in the Jiffy pellets indoors).
On both sides we are munching the occasional strawberry from the plants that were there when we moved in. And the figs in the middle are coming back up from where I had to cut them to the ground after those late cold winds killed them back.
I still have the peppers in the house because it has been too cold at night to put them out. Also more white wonder, lemon, and paris cornichon cukes. And there might be more gourds in there, too. Or morning glories. Like I said, the labels didn't stay where they should have.
On the rest of the property, the fields are tilled. I should walk down and see if they planted yet. The fruit tree I couldn't identify earlier in the year IS a pear tree. El Jefe got a little too happy with the chain saw while taking out the branches that were making mowing such a pain, and he cut off all the low-hanging branches on the cherry trees, so I'll be harvesting those from a ladder. There are lots of pears and cherries. I think we lost the apples to the late frost. Oddly enough, though, we have peaches... on a sad looking tree that is nearly as many dead branches as live. And the magnolia STILL has buds and open blossoms. Last of all, El Jefe figured out what those three scruffy little shrubs in one of the unmowed strips were - Gooseberries! Then I found more of them mixed in with the raspberries or blackberries (really which is which?) that are everywhere. There is a difference, though - all the berry bushes at the edge of the woods have white petals and white to green centers. The ones by the gooseberries (and there are a LOT of gooseberries) have the same white petals but the stamens are yellow. Really bright yellow.
And that is all I have time for today. Now off to the TaeKwonDo tests...
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