Vegetable Garden 2010

Well, I sure was late but I did get the main garden in. I finished planting it on June 15. I could say there were lots of valid reasons for being this late. It was very rainy and we had a couple of late frosts but to tell the truth, everyone else seemed to be able to get their garden in about a week earlier. I fear procrastination got the better of me.

I planted the usual veggies, corn, carrots, lettuce onions, beans, tomatoes and various herbs in the usual companion groups. I did rotate the crops as I always do. I dotted the garden with nasturtiums but did not plant sunflowers in the veggie garden this year. I have the chard in between the tomato/basil and the pumpkins just to give those icky little potato bugs that love both a bit of a barrier so they'd have actually work a little harder to get from the tomatoes to the pumpkins or vice-versa. I'm hoping that will make my plants a little less accessible and I won't have the danged bugs descending in hoards. So far, onions, beans and lettuce have made an appearance, giving the mounded, dark brown rows a little splash of colour and some charm.

I had great success with grow herbs, basil, cilantro and parsley from seed. The cold frames really helped with that. Unfortunately, the tomatoes I started didn't fair as well. They outgrew their containers so I planted them and covered them with plastic. They managed the first frost fine but the second did most of them in. The ones remaining however, already have flowers on them. I think I will plant them in bigger containers next year. So I had to buy some tomato plants, and since I was at the garden center anyway, might as well get some cukes and peppers. I got some Mexican sweet red horn peppers. I have never grown those before and I'm looking forward to seeing how they do. All my pumpkins plants were started from seed that germinated in the compost pile! That made life easy.

I still have to plant the peas and snow peas but I usually wait till the corn is about 4 - 6 inches high before planting the peas. But I don't know if I'm even getting corn this year. It was the first in the ground and I should see shoots by now. I'm seeing corn shoots I planted near the chicken coop already and that was planted just last week. While I'm not seeing shoots, I did notice about 4 days after planting the corn curious markings in the rows. It looked like something had been digging and rooting around in my corn rows. I first thought crows but I didn't see any bird footy prints. May-be it was a small creature. I don't know but I'm pretty sure my corn seeds are all gone. I'll give it a couple more days then I'll replant. I have some corn seed left over but none of the baby corn seed. I also have some beans and onions I could plant in the rows as well. It will be an awful late planting but you never know what might happen. The garden surprises me every year.