And the green grass grew...

I love my little garden.

It's been struggling. The woodchuck LOVES the greenbean leaves and the spinach.

My first planting of greenbeans was pretty much a disaster. All but two of the plants were eaten by insects or critters. Those two are fertile, flowering, and seem to be a variety that does NOT require fencing or poles to climb on. One has a seed-pod growing already.

My mom and I planted greenbean seeds that are children of her beans from her garden last year. And we planted A LOT. Of those, about half are doing well, and half have been chomped by deer or woodchuck. Those are struggling to bring up leaves again, but I'm afraid they may not make it. I planted more of the organic freestanding beans between the climbing beans that probably won't make it. So that will be 3 crops of beans if any of the 3rd planting make it.

The basil is starting to look healthier, the parsley is growing into it's pre-adolescence. The dill looks great. But the mystery is that the oregano never grew. At all. So I used that area to plant a late batch of tomatoes.

My son's one lonely pea plant is climbing faithfully up one tomato cage and its started to flower. I hope they don't require separate plants to be fertilized.

I put two cages down around the cucumber plants to give them something to climb on, but I'm really afraid they're going to totally overwhelm the cages LOL

I have one more cage for the tomatoes unless I find the other ones that may be buried under the poison ivy.

The spinach is starting to stalk and grow vertical, but many of the baby leaves were trashed by the varmint that has been eating the greenbean leaves wholesale.

Because most of the plants have been struggling, I planted all the rest of the seeds in various places for a free-for-all. Many of the plants can be harvested before they are mature (basil, spinach, parsley, dill), so why not? Nearly all the new seeds I planted are already sprouting above the soil, and will join their more mature brethren.

I've considered fencing in the front side of the garden, but I'm not sure it will inconvenience the critters more than it inconveniences me. Next year, I have to plant the tomatoes all across the front. I only put them across half the front. Hopefully that will be enough of a "nothing interesting here -- now move along" to keep most vermin out (tomato leaves are poisonous -- tomatoes are in the nightshade family, and in the middle ages the fruit of the tomato plant was thought to be poisonous).

Any of my spare seeds I scattered in the wilds around my garden plot. If nature allows them to root and grow, the critters can chomp away. Or they can eat the beans and cut out the middleman ;)

Bees. Some of the largest bumblebees I've ever seen live in my garden. And they don't like me much. They come over and check me out here and there. One decided I was too close to their hive and stung me a little on my eyebrow. Not enough to hurt me too badly, and not enough to rip its stinger off. My eyebrow was unhappy for a couple days, but I did my first aid like a good little mommie so it didn't get too bad. Now I avoid the area where the beehive is. Unfortunately it was a place that my mom and I planned for the beans to vine into. I need alternatives now.

I have wild strawberries all over the wild parts of the yard. Tons of them. But the berries are going to be tiny, which is typical of strawberries that haven't been cultivated or which have escaped from the garden. And there are brambles. I think I have black raspberries, and I'm waiting to find out what the other varieties all around the yard are - I expect blackberries, in abundance.

That's about all the gardening news for now.
[tags]critters, strawberries, stringbeans, berries, spinach, bees, tomatoes, basil, parsley, dill, garden[/tags]