Another Opinion Among Many

I was going to update once in a while on the state of my garden, wasn’t I? I didn’t. Sorry if you were expecting anything. I will do that very soon. I’m just settling in after a chaotic few weeks. The kids were visiting their grandparents (my parents) and Angela and I decided to use that time wisely. Its been so bloody hot that its been hard to motivate ourselves into getting anything done. So much for partying it up while the kids were gone!

My hard drive went on the computer, so I’ve been hobbling along the net on an old P-III that I put together from parts. Its got an old slow hard drive and 384MB RAM. This machine is not ready for a modern operating system like Windows Vista or Ubuntu 9.04 (which I had installed on it – review later), so I installed Crunchbang Linux on it.

This post is the first one on my new hard drive. I installed Ubuntu on the machine again and I will review my install experience, comparing it to the other machine, when I’ve had some more time with “Jaunty Jackalope”.

TTFN

I’ve seen much faster growth in gardens before.  Mine’s limping along slowly, though.  I thought that I’d post an update to my previous post about planting a garden, about 4-1/2 weeks ago. It seems that for over 2 weeks since that date, we’ve had the risk of frost nearly every night – in June! It must have been more than a risk because some of the seeds didn’t grow at all.  I attribute that to the frost, as I hadn’t seen any birds feasting on the garden.

click to see a bigger picture

I took this picture yesterday before the rain came yet again. With all of the rain that we’ve been having, there is no shortage of hydration. Now, if it would only be sunny for a few days, perhaps the poor plants would grow. My rain barrels have been full for well over a week and I’ve not needed to use anything from them. I sure wish that I could share with some places around the globe where there isn’t water.

So, the waxed beans, squash, pumpkin, zucchini, and herbs didn’t make it, so I replanted them.  They seem to be growing now.  The carrots are poking out of the ground with their first feathery tops and the red onions are, for the most part, growing as they should.  As you can see, the tomato and pepper transplants are thriving, as are the second plantings of beans, despite the slugs that plague this area.  The peas are looking healthy but small. They’ll come along. So have the weeds, as you can likely see.

The replants are showing already, so they warmer weather has done its trick.  I am hopeful that everything grows as well as the lettuce seems to have been.  We’ve already had some baby greens from what I thinned out of the row.  Here’s hoping.

Wait. I didn’t mention it. I planted a garden. One if the first things that I asked our landlady when we moved to this place is if it would be alright for me to plant a garden. She said it was okay and that I could put it anywhere that I wanted.

I took her to heart on that one and chose what I thought was the best spot. I got a fellow to come and till up the lawn behind the house near the back, so that we would still have a continuous place to play games with the kids. I’ve not grown a garden by myself before, so this is new to me. Our last one was a single row along the fence, which produced a few munchables for the kids for a week or so, but nothing big.

So, this year, I have a 16 foot square which I have raked  into 8 rows. Our neighbor was gracious enough to let me use a big barrel that he had to catch rain from our downspout. This way, we won’t be relying as much on the well water to keep the garden hydrated (as long as it rains enough, that is).

Corn and potatoes take up a fairly large space for what you get, so I didn’t plant any of those. I also opted for this, as they’re usually pretty reasonable to buy, as far as price goes. There are many local farmers that grow these crops, especially potatoes. One of the continent’s largest frozen food companies, McCains, draws on this province for many of  its french fry potatoes.

What I did plant were carrots, spinach, leaf lettuce, beets, turnip, squash, pumpkins, peas, dill, pasrley, wax beans, and chinese broad beans. I will be ading cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers shortly. Its been five days since the lawn was tilled up, so there’s nothing poking from the ground yet, of course.

I’ve opted out of using any chemical fertilizer for my garden, relying on the earth that is already here, supplimented by some black earth that I purchased fairly inexpensively from a local store. I will let nature do its work and just add water to the garden, as the ground seems to be fairly rich as it is (the grass was growing like crazy there).

I hope that this garden flourishes, as it will help us offset our grocery bill with fresh and nutritious food. It will have the added benefit that I know where it came from and how it was grown.