Squash Blossoms

Fat, orange, delicate squash blossoms herald the arrival of yellow squash! I also picked a squash bug off one of the leaves and scraed and destroyed the eggs she was depositing. My plants are still small compared to the ones on the farm, only the tomato plants seem to be thriving. They are full of tomatoes and are dragging over the tomato cages so that I have to keep setting them upright again.

The broccoli and lettuce is almost done and I will be pulling it soon, probably replacing it with kale and some other summer fruit. It might not be too soon to start thinking about fall squashs and gourds, too. The cucumber plants are getting stonger and soon I will need to trelliss them as well. I scraped back some dirt and saw some fat, if still small, carrots. Another few weeks and I hope to see the roots pushing up from the soil. The okra plants are budding too. The collards don’t seem to be getting any bigger, and something is nibbling a lattice of holes in the leaves. Because of the heat (I presume) the spinach never developed beyond a row of sprouts.

After this season I’m tearing down this garden and rebuilding it and I’m going to take a better look at the kind of soil, the pH, the composition, the balance… to see what is causing plants that I put in the ground in my yard to grow slowly and remain stunted compared to the farm garden plants, which are crowding each other out, trying to grow. The principle difference is that I used a blend of organic compost and topsoil in mine, while we turned the soil at the farm and added in a few hundred pounds of horse manure compost. We chose compost from a pile that was well broken down, probably been there for a year or so. They both get plenty of water, and equal amounts of sun. The farm garden ran wild with weeds, but weeds and grass have not been that much of a problem in my garden, and I think that is telling me something.

As to water, after Thursday’s rains my rainbarrel would have been full, except there was a leak around a metal handle on the outside of the barrel. I siliconed it and sealed the leak, but the barrel is only about 1/3 the way full now. I hooked up a hose with a soaker hose and ran it to the garden, but got no water. Seems gravity is working against me. The garden is uphill from the barrel. I thought the weight of the water in the barrel might compensate and push it up and through the hose, but at less than 1/2 full, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I will try it again when I have a full barrel. Failing that, I’m going to look into finding a small motor to drive the water up the hill.