Weekend Garden Progress

We finally have a break from the rain, it was a nice weekend to get things done in the garden. The weather was cool, perfect weather for gardening.

This is a row of bell peppers and hot peppers.

PaNoy gave these plants to me at the temple and I found out that they are the Chayote squash, I have never eaten them before but they look interesting and nice addition to my garden. The trellis is nothing fancy, I used the leftover materials from the ducks/chickens fencing. I was not happy with the outcome but since I spent several hours working on it, it’ll have to do for now. The construction is simple, I used zip ties to connect the fence together so it can be removed easily.

He sent me a picture of his mom with the Chayote squash, the plant is behind her and they climb on a trellis. PaNoy has a big beautiful garden, nothing like mine.

The rain water does wonder, the tomatoes are doing exceptionally well this year.

Cucumbers

Sugar snap peas

We love to eat egg omelet with sweet basil and I planted 3 over the weekend.

PaNoy gave this to me last year, not sure if I like the aroma but it does look pretty and survived the winter.

Lemongrass

This is also another plant from PaNoy.

Bo’s mom gave me the onions and I didn’t think they would survive the heavy rain but they look like they would make it.

I have to say that gardening is a labor of love and happy with the progress so far.

Early May Garden

We have been getting a lot of rain in our area, it’s raining again today so I couldn’t weed the garden. Fortunately, it slowed down and drizzled when I went out to take these photos. I planted the peppers yesterday and it was sunny this morning when I left for work. I covered the peppers to prevent the young plants from getting burnt from the hot sun and will have to cover them for almost a week until they are strong enough.

The tomatoes are doing well, these are store-bought and I will need to put down straw mulch to prevent the weeds from growing.

I planted a few tomatoes in pairs, this is my first year planting it this way.

The Sugar snap peas start to climb the trellis.

The cucumbers were sown from seeds and it took them a week to sprout.

They both share the same trellis, the cucumbers are in front and Suger snap peas in the back.

The Okras are coming out but not as pretty as I like for them to be.  I will need to put down straw mulch, Bo has some in his chicken coop and I’ll take the old straw and use it in the garden while he’ll replace the chicken coop old straw with new straw. These Okras were planted from last year’s seeds.

I assigned the mint boxed garden to my daughter Lee for her to care and weed, so far the progress has been very slow. It’s obvious that she is not a gardener, I wonder if this could be trained.

The lemongrass planted from stalks that I purchased from the Asian market are sprouting.

It has been 3 weeks since I planted the bare root dwarf fruit trees from Stark Bro’s.  They are doing a lot better than I expected, they were shipped bare root and no leaves and in just 3 weeks in the ground, all 4 trees have grown leaves.

The persimmon trees bear a few fruits and I hope that they will stick and I will be able to harvest a few persimmons in the Fall.

The Blueberry loves the rain, I do also but not during the hours that I need to tend to the garden. We’ll have a good weather this weekend, so I’m hopeful and there are still a lot of work to do in the garden.

April Showers

I started planting in the garden last week. The cucumbers didn’t make it, it was cold at night and super hot during the day and now it’s starting all over again sowing cucumber seeds in the garden. The lemongrass stalks that I purchased from the Asian Market started to take roots and I planted them outside yesterday.

Next to the lemongrass is the Thai Basil.

Bo’s mom gave me the onions and they looked better yesterday. They looked so sad after today’s heavy rain.

The mints are doing great.

PaNoy gave me these plants last Sunday at the temple. I was busy photographing the Songkran Festival and didn’t have a chance to ask him what they are. I will need to know before planting them. The Songkran Festival was a lot of fun, I will make a post soon. Here is the link to the Songkran Festival 2017 Album.

My tomato plants are thin and frail looking, I don’t think they will make it outside. I purchased a few young tomato plants at Lowes and they are expensive. Next year I will need to sow the tomato seeds in early January.  The ones that I have now will be okay to plant in the Summer.

I sowed the Sugar Snap Peas in the garden last week and it’s sprouting.

The Okra came up also, I saved too many seed pods last year and only need one pod for this row. I see that the weeds came up also, lots of weeding in the weeks ahead.

Lots of leaves for the blueberries, and only a few young blueberries.

The persimmons look promising this year, this is the second year and hope to have a few fruits to harvest in the Fall.

I have a good size garden 50 ft. x 50 ft. and didn’t want to have a big garden because I won’t have the time to care for it. I decided to plant fruit trees on the other side of the garden. This will leave me enough space for a few rows of peppers. I purchased the bare-root dwarf fruit trees from Stark Bro’s and they came in a long box within a week.

They were nicely packaged and the roots were wrapped with damped shredded papers.

I purchased 3 Apple trees and 1 Hosui Asian Pear tree.

I need to get a bamboo stake so it will grow upright. This side of the garden still needs a lot of cleaning.

I planted them last week and this one has leaves already.

I’m not a huge fan of April Showers since I couldn’t work in the garden as much as I like to but I think the ducks love the April Showers.