Veggie Gardens??

[kHT]

How are they doing this time of year?? Loving the fried zucs!! This year we are trying up the cucs in order to see them better.
Had the peas topple over so I had to string them up, the best crop of peas ever!! I moved them over to the regular bed this year
instead of the over flow bed. Every year DH would plant but due to his schedule I planted everything but the corn. He is shocked
at how everything has taken off and is growing together. Love our fresh veggies!!

[govgirl75]

Absolutely worst year ever for vegetable garden.
Cold Spring, too much rain made it impossible to get tiller into garden. Then I had viral bronchitis, which laid me up for 3 weeks in early June. Squeezed planting in at the end of June. More rain! And now, the mosquitoes, which are the size of robins (they really are, honest) are swarming and biting even when I stand in the sunlight. Plants look pathetic. Hope to get some cold weather stuff in the beginning of August.
Good thing we have a lot of local farmer's markets and a few picking farms around here.
Glo

[kHT]

Wow, you sound like our usual weather. We have seen some unusual dry periods so please send back the rain. Going on 22 days without rain and hot temps, this isn't the
typical PNW weather at all.

[govgirl75]

Ugh, you can have it!!
We have had so much rain, my tall flowers are falling over. Cleome and Delphiniums are top heavy anyway, so when the soil is so wet, the root systems can't hold the plant upright and the whole thing topples, pulling the roots right up. I have more support canes in the garden than plants. Can't get into the veggie garden to weed because the soil is too wet. Container gardens are way too wet, so marigolds are dying from some kind of wilt and botrytis is running rampant. Most stuff has powdery mildew, too. The grass is doing well, but we do not get a window of opportunity to get it mowed where it is not wet or raining. And did I mention the mosquitoes? They are the size of robins, really, they ARE!! Off repellent is my new summer scent. Already planning for next year. I would gladly take those hot days from ya!
Glo

[Chris_W]

We had a pretty good year for our small garden. The Asparagus patch is getting huge and we started harvesting some this year, the third in the garden. We are almost sick of tomatoes, which is funny because those first 20 or 30 taste so good and the past couple years have been terrible. But we will blanch and freeze lots of them. Zucchini produced good, as always, so long as we get them young though the giant ones get eaten by the chickens and they love it. Green beans are also producing good, at least the ones the groundhog didn't eat We did get one cantaloupe which was the most amazing thing ever, but for some reason only one on a huge vine flower ended up getting pollinated. Do you think these need to be hand pollinated if the bees don't get to them?

Other than that we didn't grow much else. Farmers around here have so much sweet corn that there isn't any need to grow that. We didn't get any leaf lettuce this year, probably because either the seed was too old or the groundhog might have eaten that too, and I did miss that a bit.

Hope you guys had a good year eventually

Chris

[kHT]

Yes Chris, you might have to hand pollinate it. We have a cantaloupe, some how?? I think it came from the compost pile. It's the size of a softball and I had to hide it or the boys would of picked it. They have a huge pumpkin patch this year. Oh forgot the news here, youngest son moved back in and his girlfriend has two boys!! So we are teaching the boys the wonders of gardening and they like the home grown veggies better than the ones in the stores. We are currently working on harvesting Broccoli and cauliflower before putting the garden beds to rest.

[govgirl75]

Chris, glad your garden did well this year. Sorry about the varmints helping themselves. In past years, we have "shared" our produce with the groundhogs and rabbits and I spent many hours spraying our plants with a pepper/dish detergent mixture to deter them from getting the first pick. Depending on the rain and how heavy the dew was, I was spraying nearly daily. Last year, I got a small electric fence. It is run on 2 D cell batteries (I think I used 4 batteries for the whole summer) and can be put in nearly any configuration. It worked. Took way less time to set up than daily spraying. The only ones who got in were the baby bunnies, who were able to squeeze under the fence for a short time while they were small. I adjusted the lower wire and that stopped them. The groundhogs hated the fence and after about a week, we did not see them in our yard anymore. Might be something to look into.

Yes, hand pollination does work on cantaloupe. Sometimes there are not enough bees or the weather affects their activity.

Glo

[kHT]

This past weekend we put our veggie garden out and put the plastic cover over the two beds. Done for the year.