Summer Recap #2
The garden continues to provide a bit of a focal point most mornings either watering or harvesting or searching for bugs. Not to mention providing cucumbers, jalapenos, bell peppers and lots of tomatoes. I haven't bought any from the store in months now. If I could just perfect growing limes, garlic and cilantro I could make salsa any time!
Every year I probably end up with hundreds of garden pictures, but I just can't get enough of them. They never fail to make me happy or to surprise me when I look back and see the changes.
I feel like I have finally started to make progress on the learning curve of Gardening. The soil in my two bed areas is rich and deep. I know what grows well in our area. I've started doing things without realizing that I'm doing them. I'm getting volunteer plants. And the garden is producing.
So it's time to branch out. We dug a new garden bed in late June and planted a few seeds when the rains started in early July. This was a common practice when irrigating was less feasible than relying on summer rains. We have some native beans growing ("Tepary") and birdhouse gourd vines and a lone sunflower. (The gourd and sunflower seeds came from our library's Seed Library from which you can borrow seeds, harvest seeds and then return the to the library loan program! Hooray for free seeds...now I'm just hoping to get some plants that I can get seeds from.)
I also think it's time to start crop rotation. I've had tomatoes and peppers in my two beds for years now. That's a recipe for disaster according to my reading. Since bugs and viruses and other bad things tend to use the same host plants, if crops are rotated they don't have a chance to reach epidemic status. So next spring, the tomatoes are going to have to find a new home.
Which means I'm going to have to start keeping better gardening records...and perhaps get a degree in botany so I can know which plants belong to the same family...or is it class...or maybe species?? I don't know!
Happy Gardening!
Every year I probably end up with hundreds of garden pictures, but I just can't get enough of them. They never fail to make me happy or to surprise me when I look back and see the changes.
I feel like I have finally started to make progress on the learning curve of Gardening. The soil in my two bed areas is rich and deep. I know what grows well in our area. I've started doing things without realizing that I'm doing them. I'm getting volunteer plants. And the garden is producing.
So it's time to branch out. We dug a new garden bed in late June and planted a few seeds when the rains started in early July. This was a common practice when irrigating was less feasible than relying on summer rains. We have some native beans growing ("Tepary") and birdhouse gourd vines and a lone sunflower. (The gourd and sunflower seeds came from our library's Seed Library from which you can borrow seeds, harvest seeds and then return the to the library loan program! Hooray for free seeds...now I'm just hoping to get some plants that I can get seeds from.)
I also think it's time to start crop rotation. I've had tomatoes and peppers in my two beds for years now. That's a recipe for disaster according to my reading. Since bugs and viruses and other bad things tend to use the same host plants, if crops are rotated they don't have a chance to reach epidemic status. So next spring, the tomatoes are going to have to find a new home.
Which means I'm going to have to start keeping better gardening records...and perhaps get a degree in botany so I can know which plants belong to the same family...or is it class...or maybe species?? I don't know!
Happy Gardening!
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