Our Summer 2011 Garden

Preparing our garden

 

Working our compost into the soil!

Those soaker hoses have been a life saver this year!

Week by week

Oooh!  Things are growing!

 Getting ready to put in some mulch.  Check out that squash!

 Corn's really coming up!  Put mulch around all the plants.

Look how much the corn came up in just a week!  And we've got tassels, ladies and gentlemen.

You can barely see them, but our tomatoes are really starting to shoot up!

 That yellow squash is really looking yucky.  :-(

 I put the squash out of its misery.  And moved our potted plants so they could be with their planty friends in the garden.

Took out the corn and cucumbers, and planted our fall garden!

Other highlights

 

In an effort to save the marigolds we planted in low light, I transplanted them next to the squash and crossed my fingers.  See them there on the left?

  

See that vine taking over the right-hand aisle of the garden?  We think it's a pumpkin from our compost.  I attempted to move it (along with three friends) to our tree line, but unfortunately none of the plants survived the move.  No biggie-- we've got three more volunteers going strong!

Check out that marigold!  It looks so happy.  :-) 

Our first squash flowers!

 

I planted some marigold and cosmos seeds along the side of this row.  Here they come!

And those tomatoes are starting to need the supports we put in.  Yay!

 

Squaaaaaassssssshhhhhhh!!!!  And please note the butt squash (no, not buttercorn) to the left.

Also, who knew that I'd keep a rosemary plant alive for two weeks?!

Cute little cuke.  :-)

 On the top is a volunteer from our compost.  Any ideas?    We were hopeful that it was a pumpkin, but I'm thinking based on this photo that it's a butternut squash.

On the bottom are our first tomatoes!  My mouth is already watering for a tomato sandwich....

Yep-- butternut squash it is.

  At 0.75", that's the most rain we've seen in our rain gauge in one day since we installed it a few months ago.  And our cantaloupe is trying hard to grow!

Now for another round of "Guess the Volunteer."  Any ideas?  Crossing our fingers for pumpkin.  :-)

 Beautiful cosmos plant from my step-dad (the green thumb who helped us plant our garden the last two years).  And check out our garden yield from one day:  our first corn harvest (!!), five cukes, two squash, and a gigantic zucchini that must have been hiding out.

 Our butternut squash was ready, Freddy!  We had it on a butternut squash-rosemary pizza the next week.  Not our favorite pizza recipe (we like our tomato sauce), but cool to be eating a volunteer vegetable from our compost!

 Something -- not sure if it was heat or a pest -- ravaged our cukes and yellow squash.  

 What we think this one is a volunteer cantaloupe (it's on the same vine as the week 10 mystery volunteer, but that one didn't make it)!  Good thing, because the cantaloupe we're raising from seed hasn't started putting out even flowers yet.

 Happy pepper flowers!