Garden 2016

This year my big project has been the garden.  I started digging garden beds in September and had stuff planted by October.  I was so excited to be able to garden through the winter!

These pictures were taken in February:

 I had 2 of my 5 beds planted for the winter.

 Cilantro and swiss chard in the cold frame.  I discovered I don't really need a cold frame here.

 More cilantro and kale in the hoop tunnel

That tree will be gone by March!  When it's full of leaves it shades the whole garden area for most of the day.  We hope to replace it with smaller, fruit bearing trees.

 I made a grow closet in the closet under the stairs with shop lights and got lots of seeds planted for the spring.  I got a little carried away.  I didn't expect all the seeds to sprout.  I had 66 tomato seedlings!  I ended up giving all but about 22 away.

I could have never imagined that I would one day be so excited about worms!!

The beginning of April:

 Adding another bed

 The tree is almost down

 building the herb spiral

Jump ahead to May:

 In the cold frame bed I planted sunflowers, corn, winter squash, green beans and arugula.

 Our neighbors, Steve and Olga, gave us their strawberry runners.  I planted them in a sheet mulched bed.

 My herb spiral built out of bricks found at the rental house.

 I call this the "tree bed".  I have watermelon, sunflowers and winter squash and pumpkins planted.

 My cut flower bed.

 We had so much lettuce I had to start giving it away! But I so love salads from fresh lettuce.

 I've had this rosemary plant since the 95th street house. So it's at least 8 or 9 years old and has traveled with us through 4 moves in a pot!  Now it has it's permanent home in the herb spiral.

 I can't remember if I had this thyme plant at 95th street or not but I know I had it at 87th street so it's done a lot of traveling, too.

And some pest appeared...

 I wasn't sure what what causing the tunnels in the garden until....

 I saw this guy!  They aren't so cute to me anymore.

And these were all over the front yard!

And now... June!

 While we were on vacation the garden exploded!  The neighbors were coming over to pick lettuce and make sure the plants were getting enough water from our gravity fed watering system we set up the weekend before we left.  They ended up picking cucumbers and zucchini, too!

 Less than 2 weeks after this picture is taken this watermelon is full sized and almost ready to be picked!  And there are at least 2 more in that mountain of green!

 This spaghetti squash is full sized now, too but not yet yellow. since squash vine borers have attacked the plant I'm hoping it will stay alive long enough for the squash to ripen.

 There are so many garden pests here in SC.  These zucchini plants are dying now, 2 weeks later.  We got alot of zucchini out of them, though.  Something's also eating my kale and brussel sprouts seedlings, too and my tomatoes. :-(  And we discovered that our watering system doesn't have enough pressure to get through all the lines.  I'm not sure what we'll end up doing but for now we have the drip lines hooked up to the hose from the faucet on the house.  

 These cherry tomatoes in the front are doing well but the pear tomato plants in the back of this bed look pretty sick.  We're getting lots of yummy pear tomatoes from them, though.

I really need to take more pictures.  You can barely see the logs around this now!

Our neighbors, Steve and Olga, have a big yard with lots of fruit trees and bushes and 15 chickens they raised from chicks this spring.  They went out of town for a few days and asked me to pick eggs, strawberries and plums.  This was my harvest the first night!

So this was my breakfast the next morning!

They were yummy!  I got 4 more eggs and some more strawberries and plums before they got back.  I ended up giving them most of the plums because I didn't know what to do with them all.  The boys won't eat them.

 I've been volunteering at the Project Host soup kitchen garden once a week since Jan. or Feb.  David, who organizes the garden, wanted a picture of this sunflower that's grown so tall.

 A bouquet from the garden

 There are lots of scary bugs here in SC but this is the scariest one I've seen!
I found him floating (dead) in the rain barrel after a big rain.  My friend, Lindsey, googled it and found out that it's actually found in NY, too, and much of the East coast. It's an Eastern Hercules beetle. This is the first one I've seen other than in a scary bug book!