Why you gotta bug me?

If you're a gardener, by this time in the summer you're probably hitting some pest or illness issues of one variety or another. So far this summer I've dealt with aphids, yellowing leaves on the tomatoes, and Japanese beetles - and dealt with each one with various things I had on hand, no chemicals needed. 

Greetings from the Deck Farm

Time for a garden update! Things are growing along nicely, and each thing is its own little surprise. For one thing, who would have thought that the corn would be the easiest and lowest maintenance?? I have ears coming out now, and while I don't think it's going to be a super high yield (I have seven ears at the moment, assuming all come out in good shape), it's been a fun experiment. 

My zucchini has finally hit its stride -- it had some issues early on and needed various TLC (more on that in the next entry) but now I'm harvesting at the rate of about 3 to 4 per week. Good thing we like zucchini!! 

 

Harvest Season!

So it's been two weeks....and all of the sudden, I have a full blown zucchini that we'll eat with dinner tonight, and four more blossoms popped open overnight! This is one fast-growing veggie. (On a related note, if this rate keeps up I'm going to need recipe ideas...)

We had some weather roller coaster-ing the past week or so - it got cold and rainy for a while, then temps shot back up, and I had some worries about system shock for the Deck Farm. But all plants seem unfazed. Zucchini, as noted, is happy as can be, and the tomato plants are popping out all over the place. I've been pruning aggressively but they're still extremely bushy. We now have actual tomatoes on both plants, though, so exciting news there - I was worried with the crowded pots there wouldn't be enough nutrients, but apparently that's a non-issue. The corn continues to shoot skyward, as well - this morning I realized it was up to my shoulders!

Whoa there, mini-farm

Y'all, the garden has gone haywire.

So for those of you not in the MidAtlantic region: we kind of skipped spring around here. It was cold cold cold chilly nice-for-about-a-minute and then boom, 85 degrees. So be it -- but it seems to have confused my plants. I had growth spurts across the board, but now everything is flowering and I have a feeling I'm going to have produce ahead of schedule. This might not seem so bad, but these plants haven't gotten quite tall enough yet to support the produce so I'm not real sure what I'm going to end up with in terms of crop yield. (Farm lingo, obviously.)