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Most seedlings seem to making their way through it!
I’m hoping stuff like the radishes can get through though, beans are going gang busters with it though, seems to have helped the peas as well. Generally everything since the tops been kept moist!
Obviously the bought plants have bulbs and blooms, but these are MINE.
On the left we have one of my Campfire Roses.
On the right we have I believe an oriental type Lillie, its smaller in height and has more headed and smaller blooms than some of the others.
I got tired of remaking my sisal trellice every season, and didn't like using nylon netting, so I went with something more long term. The downside? Vine removal in the fall will likely be a slog.
Trying to get in the habit of taking more pictures for work stuff. An abandoned sunflower bed that is gonna get planted with various squash. Hand weeded with a hori-hori and some shitty knee pads. I also forgot my gloves today
So here I have a bunch of the row open - I counted something like 12 flowers open and at least 25 more to go just in this row! I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to expand my lily garden at the end of the season.
The whole row:
🥰
The heat is starting to climb, so the early season stuff is starting to struggle a bit. Looks like terra cotta beats plastic and big beats small. There you go, empirical evidence of a fact everyone already knew: plants prefer the expensive pots
The unfortunate thing is, I don’t really have a place to put it for wind without it being right on the public fence, and being on a 20 foot pole to be the same height as this. It’s sheltered by the house from the east and will get a wind tunnel effect from between the houses, but other than that it should be ideal here.
So long story short, I’ve been thinking about doing this anyways, but the city had to put its worst water restrictions into place with an unprecedented water main break. The cities Largest main break which is a 2m pipe (6 foot 6 inches for the neighbours). This means zero outside watering, it’s a great thing I recently installed water barrels.
BUT they are out already trying to keep my top inch moist for my seedlings, so here we are, straw mulch and trying to use as little water as possible to do my part.
Interestingly, only this one still has the purple. There used to be yellow, white and pink too. They’ve been slowly losing colours when they come back. I do deadhead them when the bloom is spent.
This year I also added some more bought seeds around them, and I might just let some late season blooms seed as well.
Any recommendations?
Installed some new rain barrels, so just wanted to see how it compared to tap. Just using some HM Digital meters to test.
The beans, salads, tomatoes and others are finally growing a bit quicker. With the fourth or fifth start of spring, I hope this time the temperatures keep staying up.
Tomatoes are still small but growing nicely.
The new raspberry bushes produce first red fruits.
Bonus: Happy chicken sharing some leftover melon.
Just the one so far, but I'm glad any made it this far!
What the deer has been eating instead:
As I was taking this picture of my lilies that are showing some reds, a deer ran from the side yard of my house, and through the back yard, and out the fence in the back! I was actually out there to check damages from the deer that was out there 3 hours before!
I'm getting a little tired of them eating my pansies, but at least they've been leaving the lilies alone. So far. And it helps a little that a mama deer brought her baby to the yard and they didn't eat the lilies, just the Jacob's ladders and sand cherry tree's um… cherries?
Still tossing some ideas for some row coverage or critter guard, but a little more difficult with the supports, would need to be taller. Could leave top open, but than can’t use for frost.
They look pretty grown but just before I snapped this pic, one of them was begging an adult at my bird feeder, very cute to watch them flitting around.
[Image description: two small brown and white speckled finches perched on a mature sunflower that is drooping with the weight of its seed head. One of the finches is sitting upright on the neck of the sunflower, while the other is flipped upside down to get at the seeds. The whole image has grid pattern imposed on it, due to being taken through a window with a mesh screen.]
I didn't plant it (intentionally) but it's definitely more than a weed. I'm letting it grow just to see what it wants to grow up to be.
Most stuff should be able to take it, but lots of pepper and tomatoe starts.
My pak choi army has fallen. I sent them out to harden and the slugs just rolled over them in a night.
In this bed we have basically a remainder of seeds from the other ones, not gonna be able to rotate the beds like I originally planned, but oh well.
So on the left we have rutabaga and parsnips planted between rows of sunflowers and catnip.
In the right we have kale, arugula and lettuce, between those rows are carrots and radishes. Theres also an entire row of marigolds on the left side of this.
In the middle… is… carrots! Didn’t even have anymore lettuce or radishes to plant with them even.
Next year I’ll start more stuff inside properly so not wasting as many seeds scatter planting stuff stuff like lettuce.
