Community Garden Update #1! May 21, 2021
When we last left you the 3rd week of April, we had just gotten our FIRST tomato blossom!
Well, SO much has happened since then!
As you may have figured out if you follow our facebook, instagram, blog… etc, we have a bit of an… ‘impulse control’ issue… SO people kept buying more plants, starting more seeds and and and… things got a little out of hand. Think a small child in a confectionary. So here is the OFFICIAL tally of what ALL is in our garden TODAY (may 21, 2021) and of course pictures because… that’s 75% of what you’re really here for.
| Bed #1 (Back Left Corner) | Bed #2 (Front Left Corner) | Bed #3 (Front Right) | Bed #4 (Back Right) |
| Beans -8 | |||
| Tomatoes – 4 | Carrots – 5 | Cantaloupe – 4 | Cucumber – 3 |
| Mint – 7 | Corn – 5 | Watermelon – 3 | Eggplant – 3 |
| Onion – 4 | Tomato – 26 | Celery – 4 | Kale – 4 |
| Radish – 2 | Peppers – 18 | Onion – 5 | Broccoli Rabe – 4 |
| Carrot – 4 | Broccoli Rabe – 2 | Pepper – 4 | Broccoli – 4 |
| Broccoli – 4 | Zucchini & Squash – 10 | Spinach – 4 | |
| Basil – 15 | Lettuce – 13 | ||
| Greek Basil – 4 | Peas – 8 | ||
| Sage – 5 | |||
| Catnip – 6 | |||
| Dill – 4 | |||
| Cilantro – 5 | |||
| Parsley – 3 | |||
| Rosemary – 3 | |||
| Planted randomly AROUND the garden- | |||
| 3 pots with 8 strawberries | |||
| 3 squash | |||
| ?? Okra… no clue how many | |||
| 3 Transplanted tomato plants | |||
| 87 sunflower seeds | |||
| …and a partridge in a pear tree |
We had some issues with our zucchini leaves turning yellow. After some quick research and posts in our Garden Groups, we decided they didn’t have enough magnesium, (there were no bugs present so we eliminated that as a possible cause) so we added Epsom salt to the soil (we’re doing about 1 tsp/plant at the base every week or so) and that seems to have resolved the issue!
We also had the Mystery of the Leafy Plant in with the Peppers… When we transplanted stuff some of it got mislabeled.. . or lost labels… so we had this ONE random THING growing with all the peppers and we could NOT figure out what it was! We tried plant ID’ing it and all that kept coming up was Collards… but we didnt plant any collards? Sooo…?? Well after a couple weeks of head scratching, I went back and looked at all the seeds we ordered and TA DA – Broccoli Rabe! Mystery Solved! (you can see the interloper lurking in the 1st pic of Bed #2)
As I mentioned, we went a little overboard on some stuff in our excitement… Namely the tomatoes. I swear I had them all mapped out and spaced out…. Somehow we ended up with almost FORTY tomato plants… Which would have been ‘ok’ if that was what we started as seeds but NOPE, that’s what we had FULL GROWN plants… Needless to say we had a crowding issue. We had several plants that had had little green tomatoes on them for quite a while but weren’t getting any bigger, so we thinned them out.
We removed all the stems from halfway and down, and some of the stems that were JUST leaves. We also removed a total of FIVE tomato plants from the bed and planted them elsewhere in the yard to see if we can get them to survive. We also added some Epsom salt to the base of our tomato plants after thinning them to help give them a little boost. They already seem SO much happier, and we found A TON of tiny little green tomatoes in there while we were pruning them!
Our Herb garden has EXPLODED! We just picked everything last FRIDAY and we are already ready for another entire harvest! We have got a TON of Basil and we will have a TON of mint.
I’m really excited about it because that one is MY baby and I planted them for my chickens! If you didn’t know, Fresh Herbs are REALLY good for chickens! They help keep the bugs away, are great for their health and taste good on top of it (want to know more? Check out this blog!) I have to look more into the Catnip and Sage and how to harvest and dry that out… I may need to invest in a dehydrator… What we didn’t use last week we sold at the local farmers market (The Market on Trade St. if you want to stop by…) , and are using the money to save up for this bad boy…
Our Cucumbers were our latest project. We gave them plenty of space, but they seem to just want to hang out in this ONE corner all crowded. We even put up two trellis’ so they could climb UP (that was the initial plan) but they aren’t cooperating and we’re starting to see a little ‘rot’ on some of the leaves because they don’t have enough space to air out and dry etc… We we’re able to move them a little bit, and are trying to train them BACK UP the trellis and over the edges so they have a better chance… fingers crossed!
We have had a few handfuls of beans, ONE pea, a couple summer squash, some Kale, some Broccoli Rabe, And lots of herbs harvested so far! We have some zucchini, lettuce and MORE herbs ready to go now. We already have a LOT of takeaways, some key notes on what TO do and what NOT to do for next year, plus a list of MUST HAVES for our fall garden!
I can’t wait for that first home grown garden tomato… Where’s the Dukes Mayo?
