Wednesday, June 20, 2012

It’s hard to garden in a drought

Our garden goes in late every year. This means that while our friends have zucchini and cucumbers already, we barely have plants above the ground. This also means that when everyone is out of fresh tomatoes in September, we’ll still be growing strong!


The nice thing about not a lot of rain? There’s not a lot of weeds! Of course, it’s hard on the plants we want to keep around, so I guess I would prefer some rain now and then…

We plant a combination of seeds and plants. This dry weather has been really hard on our garden. I’ve been going out about every other day to water the plants, but I just can’t keep up with the rows of seeds. They’re sort of on their own.

Most of the tomato plants are doing pretty well. I’ve not given up hope yet!
tomato plant

Lucky for our seeds, we got a little bit of rain over the two days after they were planted. It was enough to get them started… let’s hope we get enough rain to keep them going! The green beans have started to come up (these were started from seeds). They don’t look great, but they’re doing okay.
green beans

The sweet corn isn’t doing quite as well as the beans. It’s pretty spotty, and the popcorn didn’t come up at all.
sweet corn

We lost about half of our pepper plants, but the rest seem to be hanging in there.
pepper plants

We got a mixture of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts plants from a friend. I’m not sure which are which, but they all seem to be doing very well. They are hardy little plants!
cabbage plant

Farmer Doc planted seeds for cucumbers, watermelons, zucchini, summer squash, spaghetti squash, and I think some gourds. These seeds have come up pretty well, but I don’t remember which ones were planted where. So it will be a surprise when they tell me what they are going to be when they grow up!
mystery vining plants1

Here’s some more of the mystery plants. These are looking more like watermelons or cucumbers, but it is still to be determined. I sure can’t tell the difference at this size!
mystery vining plants2

I had planned on putting in a raised herb garden this spring, but never got around to it. And there’s a bunch of construction debris still sitting in the area where I wanted to plant. So, next spring. And that’s okay… I’ll have my hands full keeping this garden watered!

How is your garden growing? I hope you’re farther ahead than we are!

6 comments:

  1. Our garden is growing well.  We started watering about twice a week with a sprinkler about 3 wks. ago.  I have harvested spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, zuchinni, yellow squash, ripe tomatoes and a few green beans so far.

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  2. Way to go! You’re light years ahead of us... I know who to call when I need some fresh produce! :)


    Marybeth Feutz

    alarmclockwars@gmail.com

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  3. We got our garden in pretty late too - we have a few tomatoes at our house then a bigger garden at my mom's house.  The garden at my mom's isn't doing too well, the ducks ate the tomatoes so we have to replant and the corn is not coming up very well.  The squash died and we have to replant them. It doesn't look like it is going to be a bountiful garden this year.  Glad to see that your garden is doing better that my mom's!

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  4. We’re not out of the woods yet... It’s a little bit funny that the ducks ate the tomatoes! I’ve always wanted ducks, but we haven’t gotten any yet. I guess right now I’m glad we don’t have any!


    Marybeth Feutz

    alarmclockwars@gmail.com

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  5. Are you growing heritage tomatoes? I had good luck with the Cherokee Purple. Seem much hardier and drought resistant.

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  6. There’s nothing special about these tomatoes, I think they’re Better Boy, or something along those lines. Those photos were from the end of June, and the plants have mostly died since then. :(

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