So the Gardens are Doing Well!

Been awhile since I posted pics of the gardens

Here's the expanded front beds which are primarily for tomatoes

View from the rear. They are loving the sun. Some of these plants actually survived the Easter frost

Ran out of places to put plants so I jumped on the straw bale band wagon. They worked just fine for the areas that had a challenging topography. I think I ended up with 80. They hold peppers and eggplants mostly.

Second part of the middle section. More maters, Spinach and Lima beans. I did all my hot peppers in pots and they are very happy

I'm so happy with my pepper plants this year

One of 2 small herb gardens I put in this year. Still needs some TLC. This has Fish Peppers, Lemongrass, European Green Climbing Melon and Thyme

The other: Lavender and Lemon Verbena

This is a shade garden we built for Mrs Bronx. She has put in a moonvine that will soon completely cover the trellis. A nice sitting area

Beginning of the rear left beds. Peppers, Cukes and bunching Onions

More left rear beds: More peppers maters, cukes and onions

End of left rear beds: Tomatoes also. I have a netting on those trellises and I am going to put pole beans there

I'll have to take to pictures of the other sections later.

BB

Absolutely gorgeous, BB! Love seeing your gardens. How do you keep the wildlife out? I'd guess your hard work looks just as yummy to whatever's lurking in those woods.

WOW! BB, you done good! You and your wife will be some very busy people all summer long. Everything looks great! Now all we need is some good steady rain on a regular basis. :-)

Hi Zeppy and Roseone!

The animals come around but don't eat anything. My biggest problem is the deer keep running through one of my onion beds. But I guess I should count my blessings.

There are some baby rabbits that have been gnaeing on my sunflowers but I just leave them be. They have to eat to and I'd rather it be my sunflowers than something else.

Rose: We need rain bad. Has the smoke from the wildfires in south GA reached you yet. It was really bad here today

BB

Fantastic. I've heard people on DG use stray bale gardening but had never seen it. Can someone refer me to where it is explained?

Hey BB,

Everything's looking great! My garden is looking good but I spend all my time watering because I don't have a decent irrigation system setup yet. We've had a total of 7" of rain this year. A lot of the weeds have died because of lack of water... Even the trees are showing some stress. My corn has started tasseling and putting out ears between 3-4' tall I think just because they're stressed from lack of water.

Jeff

Hi Jeff:

Yeah we need rain bad. I just opened my pool and between that and watering, I can just imagine my water bill next month.

Have you started market yet?

BB

No, our early market never opened I'm assuming because of the drought. The other market opens mid-June. Not necessarily a bad thing for me though because I don't have much I can harvest right now. I picked a lot of Brocolli, Lettuce, Spinach, Radishes and Peas, but we mostly ate or froze it. All of those are pretty much bolting now. I've still got green and red cabbage and Brussel Sprouts to pick but I don't imagine they're going to taste real good.

I'm focusing on trying to keep the Tomatoes, Peppers, Corn, Beans, Potatoes, Squash and Melons alive until the market opens...

Jeff

Hi Dunkirk

Ask and ye shall receive!

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/724771/

Props to StrawBaleMan who started and managed these very informative threads

BB

Gorgeous!!! I am so jealous. Your peppers look fantastic!

Kanita:

I'm embarrassed to say I almost killed them the other day. Was spraying for bugs and my srayer started acting up and was saoking instead of spraying. But they bounced back ok

BB

BB, sorry for my slow response, no smoke here that I've noticed. Thank God we have been lucky with no fires up here. So many trees and woods, all dry as a tinderbox. Glad your crops are doing so well. A lot of hard work is paying off.

BB, lookit all those maters! I'm jealous and I doubled my mater planting this year. I think we have 8 plants, lol :)

What is your trick to spinach. Especially spinach germination down here. I gave up on cool weather spinaches and just grow the hot weather lovin' Indian climbing spinach.

THANKS!
GGG

Hi GGG:

The area where I grow is receives a lot of shade and filtered light in addition to full sun which helps some. I also water it more frequently than my other crops.

Plus we pick a lot of it to eat before it can even think about bolting :-)