Weekly update

A little late this week....

So, my lettuce and radishes are going nuts. I am just about due to pick my first salad! The apple trees have filled out nicely, though I only had a few blossoms, so I probably won't get apples again this year. I really have to feed them better next year.

I put in some cucumber and squash seeds in the back bed and the tiered part. More will go in after we fix the fence this weekend.

There are buds on the irises and the butterfly bush is filling out better than it has in the past 3 years. All that cutting back really paid off!

You will also notice a few extra plants in the front bed on the left and a few extra pots to the lower right. These are flowers from the library's fundraising sale. You will notice that there are no actual flowers on them. That is because before I put them in their permanent homes I picked of the lower set of leaves and any buds that were more than half formed. The bottom leaves are the oldest and often will touch the soil when the plant is put into its new home. Since having leaves touch the dirt is a good way to allow fungus climb up onto the plant. Taking off the buds helps the plant focus on producing its root system rather than producing flowers. Some people take all flower buds off, but I am too impatient to wait so long to get flowers back! I got 2 4.5" pots- a daisy, but not a white and yellow Shasta daisy that most people would think of, a yellow/orange with a purple/blue center. A white geranium with yellow veining. And market packs (cardboard trays that have 6 or so plants each) of impatients, begonias, stocks and petunias. I thought about making everything all color coordinated.... then I gave up and picked whatever looked pretty! Some of them had to have the quality of surviving heat and full sun because I intend to put a few out in front of the house that gets a lot of hot afternoon sun.

So now we are just waiting for the squash and cukes to come up, the peas to flower, and the fence to be fixed so I can put the rest of the cukes, squash, peas and beans in.

YAY!!! salad this week!