Wonderful Smelling Sweet Peas
Came back from camp Saturday to blooming Sweet Peas! Just love their smell; heaven. Didn't get to do much in the garden except pick lettuce, spinach, basil, carrots, and scallions for a supper salad. After a week away the gardens need tending, a lot of tending.
This morning I went out early to pick raspberries and got sidetracked when I saw all the weeds in the gardens! Certainly gives an amazing visual to the phrase, "Growing like a weed!" Spent two hours weeding; it was time well spent. It's really important to get the weeds out. They steal nutrients from the plants that you have spent all that time, energy, and money planting and tending. And they make the garden uninviting. There really is something to be said about the garden remaining an inviting place. Who wants to go pick luscious vegetables, herbs, and flowers if you have to look at and dodge weeds?!
My good news is that not only are the two vegetable gardens weed free (mostly), I didn't find a cucumber beetle anywhere! And the cukes, pumpkins, and squashes look great! Picked three zucchini this morning and the cucumber plants are full of flowers. Went through the tomatoes and trimmed the suckers, there were tons of them. It's amazing how a garden can change in a week. I also yanked all the pea plants, seeded radishes, and pok choy and got the spots ready for another planting of lettuce, beans, carrots, cilantro, and cucumbers. And as I expected, the potatoes are full of Colorado Potato Beetles. Ugh! Will deal with that later. Beans are almost ready to be picked. Water/rain barrels are almost empty. But rain is predicted. Thank goodness.
Here's a magazine that I got last year when I joined the American Community Gardening organization, Organic Gardening. I LOVE this magazine! http://www.organicgardening.com/ They even have a blurb on the dreaded cucumber beetle and squash bug on their website, both which cause havoc in my garden. Here's a link to that info: http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-2-9-1722,00.html ; click on "NEXT" at the bottom of the page to see info on other pests such as the dreaded squash bug. So you not only get a great magazine but you have access to their website. Well, the website is obviously available to anyone; you don't need to be a member to access it.
Now it's the next day, this post is two days in the making, and I guess I should stop being a veg myself and get back out to the garden. It still needs tending. It's funny, this morning I got up and thought, "Ugh" I don't want to deal with, aka -squish, potato bugs and deal with weeds etc. Then I looked at what I did yesterday here in my post and found that I still need to plant carrots, lettuce, etc! Yeah! So that's what I'm going to do. Isn't it great how there's always so many different things to do in the garden that you can choose to do one that suits your mood and fancy? :)
Parting note: the red Bee Balm has two hummingbirds visiting them. I love to listen to and watch them flitting about in the Bee Balm. Speaking of bee balm, I made a visit to my newly made medicinal garden. It's really just a patch near the rhubarb and apple mint and I think it may be something worth discussing....later. Out to the garden.
Enjoy your garden because gardens make the world clean and fresh. And they make good food too!
Mary
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