What did you do in the garden today?

Lots of sun and lots of water for my blueberry bushes. They aren't all as big as I'd like them to be but I got plenty of blueberries last year. We ate lots of them fresh, I canned blueberry syrup and canned a few blueberry pie fillings.
I put my duck swimming pools by the blueberries and I dump the poopy dirty water on the blueberries every couple days. I still need to test the soil because I acidify the soil around the plants twice a year and TJ said it can get too acidic.
I haven't tried anything different with them for the last two years...too much else going on to worry about them. I read that inadequate chill hours will cause them to not bloom and I lazily decided that might be the problem. But my interest is returning and soil testing is on my list.

We never did get rain at our house yesterday though a 1/4 inch fell about 5 miles from us. 😭

But on the good side, it cooled things off a tiny bit. I spent this morning getting my keyhole garden ready for August. That's when gardening really starts here. I made rock rings around the plants that were still growing and added compost around them.
20220619_102445.jpg

I have two swiss chard plants that just keep going and going. These two are two years old now and no sign they're even thinking about going to seed. The stems are too tough to eat anymore, but the leaves are still delicious. If they ever do seed...I'm saving them to replant. I pick off the outside leaves almost daily and they never mind a bit. They keeping making new heads at the base instead of growing up from the center.
20220619_102518.jpg

I pulled all the compost from the keyhole and topped off the garden bed. Put some wood down in the bottom of the hole to keep it from compacting too much...but decided not to try replacing the hardware cloth with wood this year. My foots doing good but still fussy and I decided to put trying that off.
20220619_102428.jpg

I burried the apple mint in the bed and left just a few tips peeking out.
20220619_102905.jpg

And my keyhole bed is ready to go! By August the hole will have enough fresh compost in it to keep feeding the bed.
20220619_102408.jpg
20220619_102801.jpg

In August I'll dig up the plants still in the bed and lift them to the same level as the rest of the refreshed bed. Too hot to do it now.

Now I'm staring at my calendar and tapping my foot....come on August!🥴
 
20220619_164212.jpg

Any idea what kind of onion this is? It was a store bought yellow that had started sprouting.

Also. Garden is IN
Everything left got planted or replanted in some cases. Weeding got done and mulch went down. New potato patch is struggling. We had too much rain right after it went in. I think alot of the seed rotted.
Took a few more shots at the remaining woodchucks. Know I hit one, missed on the other.

20220619_163459.jpg 20220619_163429.jpg
 
The electrician was here yesterday so we're able to put a little more of the kitchen together. Last of the cabinets arrived at the shipper on Fri so we should be able to finish up the kitchen next weekend. Man, I cannot wait to have a kitchen again.
I bet, that's so hard to deal with. Woohooo! New kitchen!
These get PLENTY of sunshine. I should pick some that are in the woods for comparison.
We had a campfire last night, and she started growling while looking towards the house. It turns out, there was a fox in our bramble patch, and she must have been smelling/hearing it!
Really good doggie! Give her a scritch for me!
My cucumbers still seem to have leaf miners, but that's not stopping it from growing tons on cucs. I don't k ow what I'm going to do with them all!
Bread n butter pickles, dill pickles, quick vinegar pickles, and home made relish off the top of my head.
The extent of my gardening this weekend
And a good job of it too!

Any idea what kind of onion this is? It was a store bought yellow that had started sprouting.
Looks like shallots to me but I'm not an onion expert. And your garden looks lovely!

I finally got the bean seeds in the ground again. The first ones vanished without a trace and with the night temps still only in the high 40s I figured I still have time. It's 2:30pm now and it just hit 60 so time to go out and get some more weeding done. I think I'll pull the last of the beets that didn't do anything and plant more tomatoes. It's about time to toss the seedlings that are starting to get the stressed look from being in small pots too long.

Oh, I was weeding yesterday and while that is far from my favorite activity, I was weeding near a rangy thyme and the scent was just lovely. Mixing a few herbs and flowers in the raised beds has really been a win, win.
 
It's not just the Colorado River. There have been so many people moving to the front range of Colorado in the past 15 years and using not only normal amounts of water, but INSANE amounts of water, coupled with drought years, that the watering coming out of Colorado to the Platte river into Nebraska is dwindling. This is effecting water availability to wells and irrigation that farmers rely on to keep crops alive. Luckily the water rights are protected under a 99 year agreement with Colorado, but they keep letting people build and expand anyway. Now Colorado is angry that Nebraska is holding them to the contract.
It’s going to get ugly I think.
This is accurately it in a nutshell. And most of those moving in are from CA and they want their pretty patch of lawn in the new development... that was built on dry scrubland that has not been lush in living memory. And the HOA says you'll get fined if you let your 12x20 patch of lawn, or water sucking non-native trees and shrubs, die.

It's explosive growth in an ecosystem that cannot sustain it long term. A few more decades and they'll be trucking in water to every neighborhood. We left.
California has put water restrictions in place from what I’ve heard. No more pretty lawns. They’re coming to AZ also, not thrilled at all.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom