We are attempting a garden again this year. Last year we did pretty good with squash, zucchini, cherry tomatoes and sort of watermelon. I say sort of because we only got about 3 melons and we could have had like 12, but somebody (not me!) used weed killer to kill the weeds in the garden instead of pulling them and I think it hurt the plant. I also think we didn't water it correctly. The ones we did get were pretty good though and I really enjoyed eating them, especially since it was so hot and I was big and pregnant with Emma. This year we kinda got a late start again, so we bought plants from a nursery instead of growing them with seeds. We will try champion tomatoes, grape tomatoes, spinach, zucchini, and bell peppers. We also got some herbs: rosemary, thyme, basil and sage. We will see how that goes. I also planted some corn from seeds and maybe they will sprout. We will see. We (Brent) put some new manure in the dirt and we have an irrigation system close to being set up (maybe this week) so watering will be easier. Brent also built a shade thingy so that the garden will get morning sun and then partial shade during the afternoon. Maybe we will have more success this year.
I have really been enjoying this time of year. The weather outside is awesome, except apparently I have allergies now and they are driving me sort of crazy. They could be worse so I'm not going to complain too much. But it's kinda annoying when you go outside and then that evening and the next day your eyes are burning and your lungs have junk in them. I suppose I could take allergy medicine but I don't want it to interfere with my milk production so I just suffer a little. And wear my glasses more often.
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| Our garden in mid June |
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| Our corn harvest. We ate it within 2 days. |
Fast forward a few months. It is now the middle of (hot) July and monsoons are in full force, which basically means it is a little cooler (upper 90's-low 100's) and humidity at 70% with a 50% chance of rain and some cloud cover. My allergies are better now and I can wear my contacts (yay!) most of the time. Our garden has been fairly successful. We harvested our corn about a month ago. We got about 7 measly cobs of the 40+ we planted. I guess they just didn't get fertilized very well or something. Our tomatoes are doing great! I've already made 2 batches of spaghetti sauce. We also got a bonus cherry tomato plant from some seeds that were from our plant last year. It just started growing randomly between the other tomato plants, like it knew where it was supposed to be. Our zucchini is doing well with one zucchini every few days, the beans, rosemary and spinach tanked (to be fair, our spinach did well for about a month, then it got too hot) and our pepper plant is struggling to survive. We also have a cushaw (kind of like a butternut squash) plant that is taking over the yard but it only has male flowers on it with maybe 3 or 4 female flowers that haven't opened up yet. So we will see what that does. Adam loves the corn and zucchini.
