A Stroll Through the Garden

I took a stroll through my rain-soaked garden this morning and since the ground is too saturated to weed I decided to bring my camera. I've been snapping shots with my camera and phone to document my first year of gardening. I figure it will be much like my children, I'll forget how far we have come until I look back. (Comparing children to plants? I may have jumped off the deep end- I'm okay with that.)
I have high hopes for a good harvest and despite some set backs due to pests, frost, and 70 mph winds I think we will still have one!

One crop that has succeeded my expectations was our salad bed. Even though the seeds washed together into lower lying areas after a substantial rainfall after planting we have harvested more lettuce than we could eat on our own and we still have a full garden bed full!

Something took a liking to our carrots and between him/her/them and the rainfall that seemed to wash quite a few seeds away we only have about 10 carrots remaining our bed. They had better be the best ten carrot ever!

Our peas are another crop that did not work out quite as I had planned. The heavy rains pushed some too deep and washed others away. We only had six plants come up, but there are pea pods starting to grow!

My beans were planted in ten day intervals and the last group is breaking the surface. After a couple were broke off and left laying I had concerns, but the ones that were broken are actually starting to grow new leaves!

My pepper plants are still less than impressive as they haven't gotten much bigger over the weeks but this last rainfall seemed to help a couple of them. We had the same problem with these where something broke them off just above the ground and left the plant lay.

The cucumbers have done awesome! I think there were only three that did not come up out of both varieties. Now I have to train them to trellis!

I rushed outside this morning because I was so excited to see a spot of bright yellow in the squash bed. Hooray for squash blossoms! Although I have not tried them, Curtis Stone made them and I've been obsessed ever since. It may be more with him and less with the squash blossoms. I'd take him home! (You know, because he was Take Home Chef.)

Then there is the tomatoes. There were tears shed over the tomatoes. I lovingly cared for my tomatoes until I transplanted them out into the garden. All 24 of them. I came outside the morning after transplanting and found that something had bit them off just above the ground and left them lay. There were only four that remained. Those four are doing well and there were two others that regrew after the tragedy that are smaller but seem to be growing nicely.

The corn took quite a hit when we had two mornings with frost much later in the year than normal. About a fourth of the corn was damaged and did not come back. The rest seemed to be doing well but the 70 mph winds we had a couple days ago laid them over and they seem to be slow recovering from it. 

The pumpkins have taken off and have their secondary leaves. They are growing at a faster rate than the melons despite being planted later. 

I also made a trip down to the orchard and found that one of our pear trees has three small pears growing!

Not nearly as big as the pear the chickens had for breakfast!

Now I'm off to pull some weeds! As I'm sure is apparent from the pictures, the rain may have helped the weeds grow more than the plants!