The garden started off pretty rough this year. If you remember, this Spring was unusually chilly and wet. Per Josh's advice, I put off putting it in "on time", or even early like I like it. We finally got some things in late April and early May, only to have the Great May Deluge of 2013 wash or rot about a third of it away. Baby plants can only take so much water.... and 17 inches in less than 30 days is just a wee bit too much! June looked hopeful, before turning dry and hot towards the end of the month and into July. Now we're watering the same garden that was flooded less than two months ago.
I dare say the poor plot is confused.
For those of you who keep up with historical weather, this year is turning out to be exactly like 2011: cold and wet, then a hot drought.
First, here's how we watered and how the kids helped one very hot summer morning:
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| This is the garden. The garden needs watered. |
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| This is the pool. The pool needs emptied for fresh water. |
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| Right smack in the middle of the picture, you can see Caleb far, far away waving his hat in the air. He's in the garden. I'm taking the picture from the pool. Do you see yet where I'm going with all this? Yep. This thrifty Mama can't hardly stand to dump out a bunch of water when it could be put to use. SO............. |
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| We needed a bucket.... |
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| And a wagon.... |
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| And willing participants. |
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| Finally there! |
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| And yes, my kids help! |
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| They have learned to pour slowly so the soil can soak up the water rather than run off and away from the plants. Even when we don't water with old pool water, we fill up the big bucket with the hose and still water each plant with the smaller buckets. |
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| Then back to get more until everything was watered! It took several trips, but it all got done! We could have more easily watered with the hose, but 1) I wanted the exercise, 2) I wanted the kids to work, and 3) we didn't want to waste ALL the water, even though much of it still got poured out from the pool onto the ground for the water change. Even though we started early this morning, it got hot fast! So, after a couple of trips, I instructed the kids to play in the shade while I finished up the watering. THEN it was the time Caleb had been waiting for: harvest, meek as it was! |
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| Caleb has taken it upon himself to be the official cucumber picker this year. It's pretty funny: he'll yell out across the garden to wherever I'm at, holding up his hands a certain length apart excitedly letting me know how big the cucumber he has found is; when I actually see it, it's quite small despite the fact that his hands were about a foot apart. Watch out for his future fish tales! Here, he's teaching Sarah just how prickly the plants are and how big the cucumbers need to be before they're picked. We only got three this day. And a handful of green beans. Sadly, our garden is WAY behind. |
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| I'll bear you from having to see every picture of all the produce, but in the garden we have/had (in order from north to south) two grape vines, Indian corn, onions (which we've almost used all of!), radishes (which never made it because of the weather), carrots, lettuce, peas (which didn't make it because of the weather), zucchini, okra (didn't make it because of weather), green beans (of which half survived, but are extremely stunted), cucumbers (of which I'm VERY grateful to say that 6 of the 9 plants made it through the Great Deluge!), 4 grape tomato plants and 8 regular tomato plants (grown from seed!), 2 jalapeño plants and something like 8 green pepper plants and finally the giant pumpkins. Plus the newly established strawberry bed we made. We won't have a HUGE harvest and I'm glad I didn't splurge on a pressure canner this year because I won't have really all that much to use it for, and we won't make much at the Farmer's Market from garden produce, but we will hopefully soon start enjoying the fruits of our labor before too much longer. All I can say is... I CAN NOT WAIT for the tomatoes! |
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