It's time for another look into the
vegetable garden. To say that things are growing well is an understatement. The raised beds filled with mounds of organic material like grass clippings, newspaper, composted cow manure and good old compost are doing the trick. In many cases the plants are exceeding their boundaries and covering walkways. I need to confine those vegetables in question to their beds through additional stakes to create some sort of border.
The cucumbers are climbing the homemade trellis I put together. It's nothing fancy just reused fencing material and a few branches. I like to use materials I have on hand to help lower costs. Underneath the trellis is our cantaloupe stretching outside of the bed. you can even see the flowers poking up through the foliage. I can't wait to see some melons forming on the vines.
Speaking of melons, do you remember the little 'Moon and Stars' Watermelon plants I showed you a couple weeks ago? They are doing nicely! We have a couple flowers but no melons forming yet.
By far the most revered fruit of our vegetable garden are the tomatoes! We have some nice round green tomatoes ready for ripening. I do only minimal suckering on my tomato plants. If you sucker the plants you tend to get larger tomatoes, if you don't sucker you get more tomatoes of a smaller size. I believe smaller tomatoes are actually tastier than the larger ones and I like having lots of tasty tomatoes so my choice was simple!
I am a little disappointed with the zucchini and the squash. We seem to be getting some blossom end rot which is caused by a calcium deficiency. I'll try to take a few pictures of that soon so I can show off that nasty problem. It's correctable with some special care. Often its because of irregular watering that can't move calcium through to the new cells on the fruit. This could be caused by an imbalance in the pH of the soil and sometimes a little lime helps. That's one reason why testing your soil is a great idea! I had this issue last year so I took a few Tums and after my stomach settled I dissolved them in water then watered the squash plants. Tums are made with calcium and they seemed to help the squash!
The cucumbers are climbing the homemade trellis I put together. It's nothing fancy just reused fencing material and a few branches. I like to use materials I have on hand to help lower costs. Underneath the trellis is our cantaloupe stretching outside of the bed. you can even see the flowers poking up through the foliage. I can't wait to see some melons forming on the vines.
Speaking of melons, do you remember the little 'Moon and Stars' Watermelon plants I showed you a couple weeks ago? They are doing nicely! We have a couple flowers but no melons forming yet.
By far the most revered fruit of our vegetable garden are the tomatoes! We have some nice round green tomatoes ready for ripening. I do only minimal suckering on my tomato plants. If you sucker the plants you tend to get larger tomatoes, if you don't sucker you get more tomatoes of a smaller size. I believe smaller tomatoes are actually tastier than the larger ones and I like having lots of tasty tomatoes so my choice was simple!
I am a little disappointed with the zucchini and the squash. We seem to be getting some blossom end rot which is caused by a calcium deficiency. I'll try to take a few pictures of that soon so I can show off that nasty problem. It's correctable with some special care. Often its because of irregular watering that can't move calcium through to the new cells on the fruit. This could be caused by an imbalance in the pH of the soil and sometimes a little lime helps. That's one reason why testing your soil is a great idea! I had this issue last year so I took a few Tums and after my stomach settled I dissolved them in water then watered the squash plants. Tums are made with calcium and they seemed to help the squash!