Garden shots, end of June

Corn is super tall. Probably the tallest I've grown yet. Wonder if it's because of the beans that I planted at the base of each corn stalk. I had to use string that comes down from the house, to keep the stalks upright, otherwise they start to bend over. I got the idea from reading about the 3 sisters.

The many faces of Diane's circle garden. always changing and growing. Next month we'll had a few lights to the garden and have it light up like her Garden Shed garden. 

Crown Flower from Mr. Chang. I had it in a pot for a little while and then added it to the garden by Kinsey's room. Hoping that the Butterflies will find it and she can enjoy them right outside her bedroom window.

Grapefruit tree was cut back earlier in the year. Thanks to a chainsaw wielding Diane on the roof! Most of the top part of the tree was brown and dead. So a little fertilizer and a little TLC + water seems to have made the fruit just pop. Like the Apple tree - it takes a while for the fruit to ripen.

 Again- Thanks to Mr. Morris from finding these Guava seeds on the Big island. The plant is doing well especially next to the rain pipe on the corner of the house. Almost nothing seems to be affecting it, except for the occasional aphids.  No idea how much fruit it will produce. I'll have to start looking for recipes once it does. Except for Guava jelly or jam - what else do you do w. the fruit?

The lemon tree over the past few months has just grown beautifully. What was a dying trees that was chainsawed down, has now grown up past it's trunk and keeps reaching into the sky. no fruit, but many new shoots form each week. At the base of the plant there seems to be a cavity - so thats where I've been placing the hose to give it a deep soak once a week and also I've been placing fertilizer.

Next to that are the raspberries and apple tree. Nothing to report on the berries. it's a healthy plant, which had slowed in producing new shoots, but this past week we noticed four more light greet shoots growing past the bramble. We just wait till they're just long enough and bend them back into the plant itself. This seems to help support and keep the soil below damp.

New pink shoots on the apple tree. I thought it was done and was focusing on ripening the more than 30 apples on the tree. Diane will be so happy if we get even more fruit. We've had a few apples already, and they are just perfect and sweet. Maybe.. just maybe... we can make a fresh apple pie for Thanksgiving this year...  

:o)

Thai Papaya have finally started to fruit. I heard that these get really big. I've had some mixed success with these papaya plants, as they are growing well, flowering and have started to fruit. But most of the fruit drops off after a few days - and I'm not sure why that is.

Fingers crossed that this one stays and shows us how big they can really get!

Garden Shed / Man Cave

Recycling. It's a good practice to reuse some of the items that would ultimately go straight into the trash. Diane and I recycle our soda cans and beer bottles, egg shells and coffee grinds, and other things that could be used for the garden or hobby crafts. 

So far this year I've made a bench from a wooden pallet I found at work, as well as shelving and a storage box from a shipping crate that came with our technology greeting table. 

The shelving and storage box found a home inside our garden shed. I've yet to paint or waterproof them. It was just an idea that took shape over a Saturday afternoon. 

The brown wooden piece that has chains in it - I think that came from a table top and I had a funky idea of a workbench. Yet I couldn't have a permanent bench since the blue bins down below hold glass and aluminum for our recycling. 

 A few hinges were added and some metal chains that are really for hanging flower pots - but the package said they'll hold 16 lbs... and now we have a table that can be used for light garden/craft duties, like seeding pods or mixing fertilizer. 

we have our bikes and garden tools on either side. the lighting I added last year - shines down almost perfectly for early morning or evening projects. :)

 

Saturday cleanup

Today was a good day for the garden. Diane and I got good and dirty cleaning up, weeding, and relocating plants in the garden. 

The previous salsa garden which had the green peppers, tomatoes and hot peppers had been over grown once they stopped producing fruit. We dug down a good foot or so and tilled the soil, then added pearlite and other fertilizer to augment it. Not sure what will be planted there, but at least it's weed free for now. 

 This plant was starting to make a comeback after the house had been tented. But we decided to pull it and plant something else. One idea is to do another gutter planter. Maybe two 2x4's down in the ground and attached the plastic gutters to those. 

Hold on. It's raining now, I'm hot and I need to go play in the rain!

 Ahhhh. So much better 

 

The garden beds have all been weeded here. I'm sure they'll come back tomorrow and the vicious cycle will continue between weeds and humans. 

 Diane took the Mohawk off of the Brazilian cherry bush :)

 

 Oregano

 Sage

Two of the herbs we grow: oregano and sage were cut back - although you couldn't tell by looking at it. Gonna wash them and dry em' for use later. 

 I really really want to start learning how to grill pizzas on our little webber grill. The oregano would do well in a pizza sauce me thinks. 

About ready to eat some apples

Watching things grow can take forever it seems and it feels that way with our Anna Apples. 

 Right now we have four apples that are greenish red. In my head I'm thinking they have to be fully red before picking. 

 Plus when these four were growing, that's all we had on the tree. So keeping them growing and plumping up was the plan.

 But now...

Wherever you look, we have pink apple flowers or small apples growing. On one branch alone, Diane counted fifteen apples. I think total it's a little over thirty all over the tree.

 The kids will be here tomorrow, and when we're all together, we'll come back into the garden and pick a few apples off the tree and see how an Anna Apple tastes. 

Easy to grow Radishes

Radishes have to be one of the easiest vegetables to grow in the garden. They don't take up a lot of space and in thirty days from planting - your pulling them up and putting them into your salads.

The soil just needs to stay damp - like you would have for carrots and I've yet to see any pests that attack them. I'm guessing they aren't in the ground for very long. 

 Our 1st batch of radishes have been pulled up, and as we pull one, the soil is patted down and we drop another seed to keep the cycle 'growing'. 

 In the front garden, we've planted the radishes in rows, three deep. So we get twelve at a time.