April Showers Bring May Flowers?

Hope you all are doing well. I figured it was time to update the blog. This will be a large update because I took many pictures this weekend. Well, we didn't have much rain in April. We're now heading towards the latter part of May and it's still dry as a bone. But hey, that's what soaker hoses are for. I just wish I had a well. This isn't a plant that's edible, but the hydrangea was so pretty that I couldn't help but take a picture of it.

 

The next two pictures are updates of my four rows of Silver Queen corn. Most of the corn is now taller than I am and have tassels on the top. Some of the ears are starting to form. I took a walk through the corn earlier and the bee's were having a field day. That makes me happier than you will ever know. 

I started counting the big green tomatoes I currently have growing and lost count when I got to 70. So needless to say, when they start turning red I will have plenty to give away.  I also have two cherry tomato plants that have quite a few in the ripening stage.

 

Watermelons are high on my list of why I get excited about summer. Since watermelons are so important to Grand Bay that they have a Watermelon Festival, I figured I should try my hand at growing them. I have 5 mounds or approximately 15 plants growing right now. I sure hope they produce. 

 Zipper peas are coming along great. I noticed some aphids on the leaves last week so I sprayed them with another round of liquid Sevin. Bye bye aphids!

I have 9 eggplant plants in the ground right now and they are all starting to bloom. Hopefully the eggplants will start to develop soon. 

I bought the herbs in the picture below at Home Depot. I'm trying my best not to buy anymore plants, but dang it's hard to do. Especially when it's less than half a mile from my work. I was able to control myself on this visit though and just bought one of each: Dill, Basil, Parsley.

Another one of my favorite things: Scuppernongs! They are the grapes of the South and in my opinion there is not a grape out there that tastes better. I planted 6 vines last Spring. Hopefully in a couple of years the vines will be long enough to start fruiting. I've read that each vine can yield 80-100lbs of fruit, depending on the variety. I bought these from Isons.com. I highly recommend them if you need vines. 

 

 Finally, I wanted to show you what I was able to do with a few of the Boston Pickling cucumbers that I harvested. So far I've been able to can 3 pint jars of Bread and Butter pickles. This was my first experience making pickles so I hope they taste good. I have to let them sit a few weeks before I can open them though.

 

That's all I've got for now. Hopefully with the next update I will be showing you freshly picked ears of corn.

First Picks of the Season

Happy Friday everyone! It's not much but I wanted to post a picture of what I was able to pick this week from the garden. My plan is to make bread and butter and dill pickles this weekend if I can get all my supplies together. Also, a quick update on my zipper peas that were attacked by the bacterial blight - they look great! I sprayed them last week and will apply another coating of fungicide this weekend. I think I caught the blight in time and the peas will do just fine. I'll take more pictures this weekend and post early next week. Hope you all have a great weekend!

The Battle Begins

So I went for my evening walk through the garden last Thursday and noticed that some of my Zipper Pea Plants had purple spots starting to appear on the leaves. I wasn't sure if this was normal so I emailed pictures to one of our local county extension agents to get his opinion. He quickly emailed me back with bad news: bacterial blight. He told me to apply a copper spray to keep the disease from spreading to my other vegetables. Saturday morning I went to the local feed store and picked up a bottle of copper fungacide and sprayed a coating on my peas, corn, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumber, scuppernongs, and watermelon plants. Hopefully I will win this battle but it will be a long, hot summer and I know there are many more surprises that mother nature is waiting to throw my way. If  you live in Mobile County, I highly recommend going to the county extension website whenever you have questions. You can email one of the agents and they are always more than happy to answer any questions you have. The website is: http://www.aces.edu/counties/Mobile/

Looking good...I think

I wish I had started this blog a couple of months ago when I actually started planting, but I did take a few pictures so you can see the progress. Here's my garden plot. The cages you see in the middle are where the tomatoes are planted. I made the tomato cages out of leftover welded wire fencing. I used zip ties to secure them to the t-post. It was much cheaper than buying the cages.

Here are pictures I took this past weekend. I planted everything you see below about a month and a half ago. So far, so good.

Corn (4 rows):

Zipper Peas (3 rows):

Cucumber (4 plants in a raised bed):

A few early tomatoes (this one is in a planter, not in the ground)