This Week in My Garden: June 11, 2015
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If you ever want to give yourself a lesson in patience and releasing control, plant a garden. Boy, do I struggle with patience. Especially now that everything is in the ground, and I'm seeing growth. I want to see pea pods! I want little cherry tomatoes! I want vegetables now!
And I want to control it all perfectly (and get gardening "right").
As you can see, we're still battling the slugs - they're getting to some of the pole bean seedlings so fast that I never even see the leaves. And now rabbits. I'm continuing to use Sluggo for the slugs, and I put down one application of Liquid Fence to try to deter the rabbits. I'm not sure yet whether it's working. There were definitely some chunks taken out of things the day after I put it down, but the eating has let up a bit since then.
The copious amount of rain we've received in the last week has been great for the pattypan squash and delicata squash. I'm not so sure about the canteloupe or the zucchini, which has some ominous brown spots. And two of our cherry tomato plants have taken off. We might just get some good tomato action for the first time ever!
If my previous years' gardens are any indication of how this year will go, some of the plants won't work out. But some of them will exceed our expectations. It's still all trial and error.
I also did a little non-vegetable gardening this weekend and put some hostas into the garden bed in front of our house. I expanded the size and changed the shape of this bed last summer using wood chips from some dead trees we had cut down in our yard (you might've noticed the wood chip pile in some of my photos). My hope is to one day fill it with lots of shade-loving plants and extend it around the side of our house, but I'm totally intimidated and overwhelmed by actual landscaping. I don't have a great eye for it, and I know nothing about flowers or shrubs or anything non-vegetable. So I'm taking tiny steps.
I hated the squat little evergreen bushes that were in there before, so I switched them out for some hostas that I'm told will expand beautifully. The plants already there are daffodils and, I think, irises. My suspicion is that some of them never bloom because they don't get enough sun. I'm hoping to eventually put in some hydrangeas, maybe a small tree at the edge that gets sun, and lots of other pretty shade plants.
I have to keep reminding myself that we've only been here two years, and I don't have to do it all right away. (As with everything else in life!)
Tell me what's going on in your garden. Harvesting the fruits of your labor yet? Dealing with pests? If you're blogging about it, leave a link to your blog in the comments so I can read up!
p.s.
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