Thursday, July 26, 2012

Boney Bob is a Good Garden Companion

We're doing what we can to keep things alive around here, and that includes both cats and plants.  We water our gardens every other day.  They could probably benefit from a daily watering, but because it takes me more than an hour to water it all, that just isn't happening.  Every couple of days will have to do.


Our tomatoes seem to be doing well.  We have a total of 30 plants in various areas of the garden; all but 12 of those were volunteer plants.


We're still getting a few of our ever-bearing strawberries; we pick about a cup every 2-3 days.  I'm not sure if this is normal or not, but our raspberries have flourished in the heat and have set on quite a few new berries.  We picked just four berries in the spring and thought that would be all, so this is a pleasant surprise.  Our ground cherries (aka, cape gooseberries, aka husk tomatoes) are done for the year, but yielded a few pints.


We don't have a lot of luck growing bell peppers, so we only planted four plants, but they have done a little better than usual this year.


Our cucumbers are struggling.  They didn't germinate well, so we only have about 1/3 of the plants we expected.  There will be plenty of cucumbers for salads, but probably not enough for pickles.


Our pinto beans look sad, but they aren't.  We're drying them on the vine on purpose.


The Swiss chard just keeps going and growing.


Kat's garden still has three small melons in it, all of which seem to be growing well.


Back behind the shed, we have a Three Sisters planting.  The corn is tall and I think the ears are just about ready to pick.  This is a late season variety, so it feels like we're running behind a lot of other area gardeners.  Under the corn is green beans.  The plants are green and pretty, but there are no beans.  I think we're running out of time.  Between the corn/bean clusters are squash plants -- zucchini, butternut and acorn.  They look pretty good, but so far,  no blossoms.  A couple of tomatoes volunteered among the sisters, so we left them and I noticed they have blooms now.


The Jersalem Artichokes are thriving, and we haven't watered them at all!  We're giving our asparagus, rhubarb and blackberries a little water, just to keep them alive.  They're done for the year, though.

I think that's about all we have going on in the garden right now, but very soon it will be time to think of late summer and early fall plantings.


And before I forget, here is Bones again.  We have also started calling him BOB, which stands for Bag O' Bones.  He's gained a few ounces, I think, and it appears some of his fur is growing back in.  We moved him to our back yard and he seems to like it there.  He's quite the garden companion.  He loves to follow along and keep us company while we're watering and harvesting.  He's even started pouncing on the garden hose and chasing butterflies, so I'd say he's starting to recover.
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