Monday Status Report

Color: Some of my garden beds are designed so that they have different color themes going on at different times. In the corner bed, the spring cool colors, blues, purples and pinks are starting to peak. It's my favorite time for that bed. Soon it will change over to hotter colors which are nice, but the blues are my favorite.

Bean Update: Sigh. In desperation today, I tied one of these poor little seedlings to the teepee. I'm hoping it will be inspired to grow. Currently, the bush beans are twice as tall as the pole beans and the nasturiums are giving them a run for their money too. My beans are frustrating me.

Bee Update: I started seeing honeybee's today! Still not nearly as many as it typical, but at this point I'm glad to see them at all. They are loving the nepeta and the lupines too!

I continue to hand pollinate for now. The weather is absolutely perfect for it and I want to get as much going as possible before the heat arrives. Tomatoes don't pollinate well when temperatures get above 90 degrees, especially if it is humid. In this area, you never know when that will happen so you take advantage of the good stuff as much as possible.

Pest Update: This is a new one for me, toads! We have a ton of them this year. They are all over. This little guy has been pooping in my garden boot! I'm loving what the toads have done to my slugs and earwigs. They're gone! Toads are not the perfect garden friend though. They like to dig. Toads particularly like to dig in the soft squishy soil that surrounds freshly planted plants. I've had to do quite a bit of replanting thanks to these guys. At least they don't rip them out and eat them though right?


Greens etc: Here's the weekly shot of the greens bed. I think this may be the peak pretty week. The chard was getting ahead of me this week. I don't like to let the leaves get huge. Today in a flash of brilliance I picked all the big leaves and chopped them up and added them to the peppers and onions in the bbq beef. It sounds weird but it was good and it passed the munchkin test too!
Hot bed: In the hot bed, fast growth has been the name of the game. These tomatoes gained another six plus inches of height this week and the purple potates have maxed out their bag. All three tomatoes in the container have fruits on them and many many blossoms. They sure are sucking up the water though. The reservoir in this container is huge and I have to fill it once a week.

Watermelon: I still have the watermelon in the wall-o-water to try to keep the heat on it. It has made no real progress to date. Maybe on little leave, lol.

Circle Bed: In the circle bed, the chives are about ready to have their heads lopped off. I don't let them go to seed. I did sprinkle a few of the blossoms on the grilled potatoes tonight. The kids got a kick out of it. The peppers in this bed are getting chewed on a bit. I think it may be ants but so far, I can't find the culprit.

The peas are finally blossoming out and the tomatoes had to have some emergency short stakes stuck in today because of high winds. I haven't been able to get to the store for the tall stakes and the wind was crazy today. Black Krim has a big fat fruit on it and I didn't want to risk damage, so some trim pieces got pounded into the ground for temporary support.

I'll finish with a pretty color combo. The forecast this week is more of the same, essentially perfection! Moderate warmth with intermittent big rains. A bit more heat would speed up the melons and peppers but that would be at the expense of all the greens we are enjoying so for now, I'm not complaining about what we are getting. This has been the best spring gardening weather I have remembered in a long time! It's been really wet, but not flooding and that's good. I hope I don't jinx myself with this! LOL