The Bare Garden Continued

I have three bell pepper plants this year and they have grown very slowly. I have not even seen a single fruit on the bell pepper plants. I am going to put them in a different location next year along with more manure.

This year, I have not had an issue with aphids. Since last year, I have been spraying Volck horticulture spray on all the fruit trees in my yard. Last year, I had a lot of aphids on my trees which then spread to the garden. This year, there are no aphids (that I can see) on my trees. Another thing that "bugged" me last year was the June Bugs. I have an apricot tree in my yard and last year I had a ton of june bugs eating the apricots. I didn't get a single apricot because of these bugs. I had put up a japanese beetle catcher and I had put some of the rotten fruit in the bag. I placed the bag on the opposite side of the yard and I did catch a lot of them but like some people say, it just attracts all the bugs in the neighborhood. This year I was more aggressive with killing the june bug larvae when I came across them in the garden soil. So far, I have seen only one june bug, which I promptly killed. However, the apricot tree has only a few fruits and they are still small and green.

Last week, I noticed the pickle cucumber plant also started getting powdery mildew so I saturated those leaves with Neem oil. I noticed that several pickle cucumbers are round and yellow. From what I read, this means that I need left them on the plant too long and they have turned yellow. I am not sure how that explains why they are round. Maybe they are not getting enough water.

The Jalapenos are doing ok. This plant over-wintered from last year and has been slow growing this year.

The Bare Garden

Well, its July now and its clear that this garden is not what it was last year. So far, I have only picked one japanese eggplant for the season. Last year, I was picking four or five eggplants every weekend starting around the end of May. I have only picked one round red tomato. Last year, I had buckets. I have only picked two yellow squash where last year I was picking several every weekend. The zucchini has been the most prolific plant in the garden this year. I have picked about one large zucchini every weekend from one of the three plants. Only one of the plants has grown fairly large. At this point, my garden is more of a testing ground and I am trying to reduce the impact of powdery mildew which devastated the garden last year at this time. The larger zucchini plant started out with powdery mildew this year around the end of june. Last year, I had learned that people use Neem Oil to fight powdery mildew. I purchased a 3 or 4 gallon sprayer and as soon as I saw the powdery mildew, I sprayed the leaves with Neem oil. I saturate the leaves front and back.

May Garden Status

I am so far behind. The garden is bare compared to last year.

I picked up a couple more plants from the garden center. I bought a couple japanese eggplants, a black beauty eggplant, a couple tomato plants and a couple jalapeno plants. You can see that I haven't transplanted the eggplant and jalapenos yet.

I dug up this space to try a new crop this year. I am going to plant asparagus here.

Seeds sprouting

I planted zuccini and squash plants at the end of March and they are now sprouting.

I had picked up some bell pepper plants and a habanero plant from the home improvement store.

Spring Crop Planting Started

I finished setting the posts for the fence and I have the gate up so the fence is complete for now.

I built a new garden bed behind a shed I have on the side of the garden and added a lattice. Around the end of March, I had planted some pickle cucumbers seeds from last year.

On the opposite side of the shed, I planted green beans from seeds at the end of March too.

Late start planting in garden.

I am off to a terrible start this year. We are planning on getting some dogs this year so I am building a fence around my garden. The fence is still in work as shown below. Last year, I didn't have much luck with transplanting after I started plants from seed. I tried again to grow a few things from seed but the died again when I started trying aclimate them to the outside weather. I figure since I have a small garden, it is less headache to just by the plants from lowes/home depot. In the photos below, I have some brussel sprouts that I bought at lowes in Feb and had planted some onion seeds around the same time. I have a big bush of parsely growing too that I had planted last year.

Getting Garden ready for Spring

We were on vacation during the end of december and half of january. This year I have a slightly different mindset in that my goal is to get things planted by the end of March. At that time, morning sun will hit my garden from a different angle which will provide more sun. Some of the things I had planted early last year, were in complete shade up until around March/April. Some things didn't even sprout. I have re-arranged some garden beds based on how much sunlight they got last year. I am also rotating the crop this year to see if some things grow better in other locations.