Garden Update

Just a few photos of the garden today.

The spaghetti squash is cruisin' along. I'm trying to convince it to climb the ladder. Looks like the first female blossoms must not have been pollinated as they are yellowing and one fell off today. There are probably 8 more there already, so I'm not worried. I'm pretty sure I will have a jungle of spaghetti squash come end of summer. The pumpkin is following quickly along behind the spaghetti. At least they are both small fruit varieties (small wonder and small sugar).

When I ordered seeds this spring, I also ordered some seeds for sprouting. On a bit of a whim, I decided to plant some mung beans last week. I've don't know much about mung beans other than the sprouts are pretty good and it sounds like they're a bush bean. I've tucked them in along the edge of the squash bed, just to the left of the nasturtium in the above photo. We'll see what happens!

On the subject of beans, something is wrong with my bush beans.

At first, as the leaves yellowed, I thought it was the normal period where they get a little yellow after sprouting but they didn't get better. The front 6 squares in this photo are one variety, the first planting of beans. I plucked the worst leaves from the plant in the center square, but they were very very pale. If I remember right, the center plants were the first to sprout and the edges were later. I did plant a little early, so I'm wondering if it was still too cold for them. The greener ones behind the bad ones in the photo were planted a couple weeks later than these. If they yellow too, it may be a disease or a deficiency. This is a new bed this year, so maybe they don't like something in the layers.

Mmmmmm...... Tomorrow.........

I SHOULD have had my first ripe strawberry earlier this week. I checked the garden and saw the first blush of color on the berries one afternoon. The next morning when I checked, I was surprised to see a bit of almost ripe berry (so soon!) and was quickly disappointed when I saw that something had beaten me to it. It and it's 3 friends. I'm quite sure it was a bird since the berries had a slashed area in them.

I used one of the sheer curtains to cover the top thinking that the moving fabric would deter the birds. When I checked the next morning all looked good. When I checked that afternoon, the one ripening berry I had was GONE. The cap was there, the rest was gone. The strawberries are now completely wrapped. I have a piece of old sheer/gauze type curtain material my mom had in a trunk (probably for 30 years - who knows). It's about 20' feet long so even though it's not too wide, I can make a couple passes with it. It seems to be working as I have ripening berries under there that are still intact. Today, there was another that was nearly ripe. I couldn't take it- I ate it. It was so good... it reminded me of the wild berries we used to pick when I was young. I'm letting the rest ripen before I pick them.

The All-Blue potatoes in the ground are the first to bloom with Kennebecs soon to follow.

JustJenn, I made a point of smelling these this morning and I agree, they do smell good.

I'm very curious to see what's going on underneath all the potato foliage but I am resisting the urge to snoop until they're ready (or closer at least). I hope some of the blue or purple potatoes are ready when my mom comes to visit in a couple weeks. I'm crossing my fingers that at least something from the garden is ready while she's here. I'm afraid lettuce and peas will be done but I'm not sure what will be ready.

Speaking of fingers, I went to have my fingerprints scanned today for a background check (I'm getting my real estate license again and Colorado likes to check you out first). After she scanned all my fingers, she had to roll & scan each one individually. The computer compares the two scans and apparently tries to match a certain number of points. If it can't match a certain number, it rejects the match. The program rejected every one of mine from multiple tries. The first question she asked me when we were having problems - Do you do a lot of gardening?? Ok, so she tossed in "without gloves" or have you handwashed dishes for a long time? I guess it wears the fingerprints down enough to make scanning difficult.

I twice worked as a dishwasher many years ago, I worked at a flower shop for 6 years- about every job there was there but mainly in the greenhouse or design room, 5 years or so of sign work, I'm a pretty chronic hand-washer and I only started wearing gloves regularly in the past few years. Not lookin' good for these fingertips...