Twiggybet1's Blog

Update on Garden's Progress 6-28-08
Jun 28, 2008 | 5:06 AM PST

How about that?  I can't think of a very original name for my blog post, but that describes it best, I suppose.  It has been 8 days since my last post. I had intended to blog w/ photos about once a week to keep a photo journal of how the garden progresses.  It is amazing how much difference you can see in a weeks time.  When you are seeing your garden every day, you don't notice how much everything is growing.  Right now my garden is in that "in-between" stage - everything has been planted, but not too much is ripe yet.  The anticipation stage, I call it.

We have been getting the best weather a gardener can ask for!  We have had several thunderstorms during the past week, mixed with lots of sunshine and warm summer temperatures.  I am so grateful, and I feel so blessed.  I sympathize with gardeners in other areas of the country, some in drought areas, some in flooded areas. 

I took these pictures a couple of days ago, one early morning when the dew was still on them:

The assorted salad greens are doing great, they are still a bit small for a complete harvest, but I have been picking some, sort of thinning them out.  What a difference fresh picked lettuce makes in your salad bowl:

I will soon have green beans!  I plan to check later this afternoon to see if any are big enough to pick:

 The peas are going to be ripe right around the time I will start to get some beans.  They usually can be planted a bit earlier than they got put in this year.  This spring was really wet, and my soil way too soggy to put them in on time, so I am VERY pleased they are doing well this year:

 I can't remember if this is the first head on the broccoli, or a "side shoot", because I picked several heads when they looked like they might flower.  These, too, were a little later being planted than they could have:

 The peppers are hanging in there, but they don't seem to be doing much yet.  A few blossoms here and there.  Here is a photo of the first (and only so far) pepper of the season:

 The beets are about the size of marbles right now, but I expect that the recent rain will make them swell up to havestable size very soon.  I have been culling some nice looking leaves to add to salads. 

 We used to have several of these blackberry bushes (aka thimbleberries), along with some black raspberry bushes (aka black caps).  We tore out some of them before they could take over the whole garden, but left a few.  Most often, the birds notice they are ripe before I do!

One of the things I am anticipating the most is sweet corn!  In all the years we've gardened, this is the first year we planted some corn.  It is hard to remember way back to when my grandpa grew it on his farm, and he isn't around now to ask advice.  I feel like such a novice, and only have a vague idea what to expect.  I am not sure if I should be concerned or not about these red streaks on a the leaves of a few of the plants:

I appologize for the blurry picture.  I need to get my eyes checked, it looked fine on the little bitty 2" screen on the camera...but anyway, you can see the coloration I mentioned.  I certainly hope this isn't a plant virus or something...

Until next time....