Pictures from the garden

The garden has been coming along nicely. Some days I go and look, and things are sprouting and blooming before my eyes. And then some days, I think that everything is looking puny and about to die because I haven't watered enough, or I watered too much, or whatever. It's a little bit different, using the containers rather than just dirt in the ground. They are a little more picky about water. The tomato plants suck up water like a sponge, and always seems dry, while some of the squash have tiny mushrooms and some white fuzz that might be trying to be mold. I think location also plays a part, because the deck is the sunniest, but Lumpy Dog takes offense to some plants and knocks them over. So I moved those to the side yard, which is sunny, but has a tall fence and the house, so it's direct sunlight for only about 4 hours or so. And there has been weird, overcast, but hot and humid weather recently, so that probably doesn't help.


The marigold is in the front yard and I have really enjoyed seeing the color every day. I am not much of a flower person, but I think I will add a couple for color throughout the year after the experiment with the marigolds and begonias (which have mostly withered already).




Here is the biggest plant- four yellow squash in a big planter. I probably should have thinned them, but they all look so good, and I ran out of planters so I would've had to throw away whatever I thinned, and that's just no fun.

In the mornings, there are huge yellow squash blossoms, and after they are fertilized (I think, but I'm not a horticulturalist!) they start to form the squash vegetable. From all the blossoms, it looks like I'm going to have a lot of squash!

So far, I haven't used any pesticides, but I have used some Miracle Grow. I'm not a huge organic or die kind of person, and really, I just don't know what else to use. And with the containers, all the plants have is that little gallon of soil, not the whole vertical section like in a dirt garden. In a dirt garden, I could work in cow manure, or any of the other supplements, but with just the container, I'm not sure what else I could use.


And in the back yard, I had an old compost heap from the previous owner that has not been used- Lumpy Dog loves to eat compost, so it doesn't actually get to compost. It's pretty shady, but the plants I put out there are doing pretty well, including the bush beans, which had pretty little purplish flowers and are now sporting some beans.