Chronicaling the lunacy of taming three acres in Tidewater Virginia, one square foot at a time!

"Gardens... should be like lovely, well-shaped girls: all curves, secret corners, unexpected deviations, seductive surprises and then still more curves. ~H.E. Bates, A Love of Flowers


Monday, April 26, 2010

The State of the Garden April 2010

 So, a long post to share the state of the veggie garden as April comes to a close. All in all things are going pretty well. It seems like many plants are ahead of themselves abit this year- whether all the wet or early warm or both, who knows. The Clematis is happily reaching up the trellis despite the wookie Welsh Terrier making her appointed rounds. The flowers are easily six inches across and just the most beautiful color.
 In this bed two, Mr Stripey tomatoes, a little basil, a little lavender that overwintered well, a tomatillo... the arugula in between will be long gone once the warm weather things are booming.
 The romaine seems happy and is pest free at the moment....although there must be some lettuce eater lurking nearby. A variety of peppers are situated in their summer spots.
 The broccoli is making nice heads....hopefully it will reach ideal before the heat really settles in. I think the partial shade in that area is helping keep the temperatures down. The cabbage worms are having a field day with the green cabbage, but seem less interested in the red. Perhaps because they are screaming green and would be easy prey for some bird against the red. At any rate they are soft and kind of squishy and I am totally grossed out every morning picking them off the cabbage...ew!
 The onions are thriving...
 Peas are flowering, so I expect to see pods soon. Interesting that all these were planted at the same time, but the box on the left had plants that I transplanted...I have a hard time "thinning" killing babies. I need a tougher affect!
 Okra for pickling and maybe some gumbo if the crop is good.
 Lot's of radishes and bright lights swiss chard coming along...

 Ever bearing strawberries, dill that seeded itself from last years plants, fennel, pineapple sage and some oregano....
 This weeks  "TBP" to be planted. I love the millet in the garden and the birds do too.
 Cukes doing well.
 Enjoying the pansies and viola's before they are cooked!
 The fig seems happy in it's location, though we have yet to eat all the fig preserves we put up last year....
 And, the planned expansion...GoddessSupport built me more boxes and this weekend, hopefully, we will move the fence to make the garden twice as large as it is now... with a plan for a boat load of Roma tomatoes for gravy, watermelon, cantaloupe, and maybe pumpkins. We have 4 blueberry bushes that will be enclosed and will add several more blackberries to the one we already have.
I am pretty satisfied with how it all looks for the end of April! And I am grateful for a wonderful husband who supports my gardening insanity.

2 comments:

Crystal said...

Your "veggie patch" looks like it's doing extremely well! It's posts like these that make me hopeful that I could grow my food supply from seed as well, but unfortunately I haven't had much luck yet. My "Sugar Ann Peas" aren't nearly as developed-looking as your peas and the lettuce is in the same boat. Will wait and see if things pick up.

Janet, The Queen of Seaford said...

hello fellow Tidewaterian. (or whatever one calls it) I live on the peninsula in Seaford---for the next couple months. I look forward to reading your posts now that I have found you....came by way of Deborah's Garden blog.
Your veggie garden is looking very good.