A Garden Update

To a die hard gardener, the sight of all of the grass in the following photos, would emit shame to the garden owner's name. In this case, it's my fault- all my fault. I take the blame. Yes there is grass everywhere but I do have a couple of excuses for that grass. First off, this year has been unusually wet. It rains a lot and when it rains, you can't exactly get out into the muddy garden. 2ndly, our garden isn't exactly nearby our house either- 10-12 miles away to be more specific, lastly, we've been having a little car trouble that has prevented us from transporting the entire "herd" anywhere at the same time. So there you have it....my excuses.

Now, it has quit raining so much, I have wheels again, and I therefore, ventured out to see what remained of the sorry, neglected garden that I had so many high hopes for. Poor Uncle Bubba has been doing what he could when he had time to keep things going but he is limited in daylight hours.


This is a hopeful sight, don't you think? I bought these yellow crookneck squash seeds with high hopes that if I planted 6-8 plants, we would be supplied with enough yellow squash to last us all year long (we don't eat much of them to begin with).


Wait a minute, uh.....isn't that a zucchini? Um, yes it is. It is wonderful that there is a zucchini growing so happily but there is one problem. I didn't plant zucchini. Guess what? I guess that all of my yellow crook neck squash plants are actually zucchini...... hmmmm, maybe I have a bone to pick with the seed company now. Anyway, we picked our zucchini and are quite proud of it. At some point, we are going to cook it up and eat away as the kids can't wait to eat something that they helped grow.


Check out these weed infested pinto bean plants. They are a little dry right now and if we don't get some rain in the next day or so, things may turn even uglier than they are now.


The peanut plants seed quite happy in their little situation (minus the grass infestation mind you). It won't be long and they will be flowering.


Poor Mr. Okra. I almost walked right past him without noticing he was there. Some bug is eating good at night (along with the deer). Look out Mr. Bug- I'm going to get you with some soap spray real soon.....


This is Uncle Bubba's Bloody Butcher corn. (Yes, it's going to be red corn). See the little corn to the left of the big corn? That's our Blue Dent corn. The grass is going to eat it up if we don't get busy this weekend trying to save it's life. Our corn will be blue by the way, if you didn't catch that fact. We have some regular white corn planted but I'm not sure it's gong to make it. Deer are particularly fond of young little corn plant niblets.

Well, there you have it. Here are the totals thus far:

Harvested: 1 single, lone zucchini that we didn't even plant
Lost: Two crops of carrots (deer ate them), lettuce (deer ate them), cabbage (deer ate them), bell pepper plants (drowned in the swamp), chili peppers(drowned), 36 tomatoe plants (thank you chicken manure that washed down the hill and poisoned my poor seedlings), 12 cucumber plants (drowned in the moat that we called the garden when it was raining almost every day) and last but not least, potatoes (thanks to the fire ants).

Hmmm, I guess we need to do some planning for the next garden huh? Those plans need to include a fence, higher ground to keep the garden from being a swamp part of the year, and I need to find some kind of fire ant control for those poor potatoes. It's not over yet and I'm not going to give up.