Mom Always Said "A Watched Pot Never Boils"

Sometimes daily, sometimes every second or third day, you will find me out in the garden, camera strapped around my neck, looking for blossoms, bugs, and produce. So far, the sun sugar tomato plants have produced one very small round of tomatoes (but O. M. G. when they produce the next round, it will be an explosion of fruit); the zucchini have been giving nonstop now for over a week. In fact, today I harvested 9 more zucchini, many of which are destined for a zucchini chocolate sheet cake. The picture shows one of my cats, Dakota, checking out the zucchini to see if it is kitty-worthy. (Yes, Dad, I will wash off the kitty hair before cooking with it.)

But I am ever-so-anxious for the rest of the garden to bring on the food! My beans are blossoming and vining and just beginning to produce some beans (as evidenced by the picture), but they have a lot more work to do! Plus, while I love zucchini and have lots of recipes to fix it many different ways, it would be nice to have some variety in my garden diet...some rich, juicy tomatoes, a crisp cucumber, a little cilantro to spice up a salad or some salsa.

But despite my whining, the plants are doing very well. The cucumbers look absolutely amazing. I do wonder, however, WTH I was thinking when I planted the dill in the very next row. I am going to have to put some fencing or something between the cukes and dill or move the dill so it won't be literally overshadowed (and killed) by the cukes. Only about three dill plants took hold, so I'd really like to keep them growing!

The beans are vining and blossoming nicely, including the ones that I planted too close to the zucchini. The onions and shallots look pretty good, too, although only a few shallots actually came up. I'll probably end up simply using those for seed shallots next year. But the onion greenery is fantastic, and I can see a thickening of the stalk at the bottom, which hints to me of a decent size bulb growing.

I didn't think much about companion planting this year, so eager was I to get the plants into the ground. Apparently, beans and onions do not companion well. I'm not certain what this will mean for bean production or flavor...I'll have to do a bit more research. But even though I haven't gotten much produce out of my garden yet, I have high hopes that I will soon be eating more of a variety of food from my garden. And I suspect that once the tomato fruit begins to ripen--there is already a LOT of fruit on each plant--I will be complaining that I can't keep up with the variety.

The Lady of Shallot (with Apologies to Tennyson)

Since the ground was too wet to plant today because of the rain yesterday and this morning, I decided to see whether the rain had resulted in any plant growth in the garden. The beans I had recently planted had perked up, and lo and behold, the zucchini plants--all 12 of them--are starting to look like zucchini plants now! It won't be long now and I'll have to break out the zucchini recipes. My favorite is Zucchini Chocolate Sheet Cake; close behind is Cagley Casserole...a zucchini casserole recipe given to me by a former neighbor, now deceased, named Mrs. Cagley. She was my gardening buddy, always bringing me shallots, rhubarb, and asparagus from her garden, while I provided her with zucchini, lettuce, and tomatoes from mine. She was a wonderful neighbor, and always had helpful gardening tips at hand to help out.

The shallots (planted in her honor) and onion sets, both yellow and white, are sending their shoots up through the grass clippings now. It will be a while before they will be ready to harvest, but I'm delighted they are doing so well so quickly! I'm not entirely certain what to cook with shallots (other than just to use shallots as onion replacements for a slightly different flavor), but I'll do some recipe searches before harvest.

What I'm most pleased about, however, are the tomato plants which, after being inexcusably neglected, have rallied! The new leaves on top are a deep verdigris, and all but the two smallest plants have at least two small tomatoes a piece. A couple of the plants even have additional blossoms, so provided that I keep them well watered, they should produce well for me this season.

My biggest concern right now is getting the rest of the garden planted! I know I sound like a broken record, but please, Mother Nature, may we have a couple of days without rain? Pretty please?

Finally...I Am Playing in the Dirt!

Yesterday I finally was able to re-till the garden quickly and begin planting. I had 8 sickly, water-starved tomato plants that needed to get into the ground and watered deeply. (I watered them a few days before my wedding, which was last Saturday, but busy-ness caused me to neglect the poor things.) Today they are starting to green up and stand a bit more upright. A couple of them even have teeny tiny tomatoes, despite being parched. These tomato plants want to live!

I know that some of you are probably asking, "So, why didn't you plant your garden much earlier? Sheesh, it's June 1 tomorrow!"

The answer goes something like this. Rain. Rain. Rain. No rain--ground too wet. Rain. Rain. Rain. No rain...oops, rain. No rain--ground too wet. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. More. Effing. Rain.

We were supposed to get the four-letter R-word today, but thankfully the weathercasters were wrong! So I schlepped out to Menard's to get some rabbit fencing,stakes, and more organic seeds. (I've seen bunnies in the yard, so I'm not taking chances.)

Apparently, I missed the Menard's-party memo. Everybody in the area was at Menard's, with not a single cart to be found. Courtesy dude, who is supposed to collect carts and bring them back to the store, looked lost. I finally went out and brought my own cart in. Then, people were in my way, driving on the wrong side of the aisles (you can tell what kind of driver they are on the road by the way they drive their shopping carts in the store). Sheer craziness. But I found what I needed and headed home.

I watered the poor little tomato plants (I read somewhere that they need a gallon of water each day--whoa!) and then set out to do some more planting. I got 12 zucchini plants in the ground and surrounded by grass clippings, 80 yellow onion sets, 20 white onion sets, and 20 shallot sets. (I don't think I'll need to buy onions the rest of the year.) I covered them all with grass clippings and watered them well.

By then, I was utterly exhausted. Too exhausted to manage planting anything else or put up the rabbit fence. Clearly I need to build up my stamina. I was able to get all the implements back to the garage, and now can barely budge from the chair where I am sitting, typing my gardening commentary.

Tomorrow I will start some more seedlings and hope to get some cucumbers and/or beans planted. Unless I can't get out of bed.

A Tilled Garden is NOT a Putting Green

The forecast indicates we'll be getting more rain tomorrow, so David spent most of the afternoon tilling up the rest of the "putting green," aka "garden." I think he is trying to make a point by getting out his putter and a golf ball. He is practicing chip shots over and around the humps of wet soil he has tilled up--maybe sandtrap practice? Clods of dirt go flying. This is his last opportunity to play (golf) in the dirt before the garden is planted!

While he was tilling, I planted the three raspberry bushes and the blueberry bush I bought at Lowe's. (It seems wrong, somehow, to buy bushes at a hardware store. I don't think I'll ever really like the megastores.) If they don't die, aren't eaten by rabbits or deer, and don't get stepped on or flooded, then we'll have golden raspberries, red raspberries, and black raspberries, as well as blueberries. Of course, they don't usually fruit for up to three years, so it will be interesting to see how they do.

I also bought rhubarb starts, asparagus starts, white and yellow onion sets, and shallot sets, so I'll have to get those in the ground, too. The rhubarb and asparagus won't be viable this year, and maybe not the year after. And I STILL need to start my seedlings! Thursday. I will start them Thursday. No matter what...