Gardening, Sleeping, Eating, Gardening . . .

That's about all this past week has consisted of . . . gardening, sleeping, eating, gardening . . . and more gardening. Due to our uncooperative weather during May, putting in my garden definitely got off to a slow start and although it's still not too late for just about anything I want to get in, I am behind my usual planting schedule. By more than a little bit!

This past week has given us glorious, if a bit on the warm side (whew, I'll say!), weather with NO BUGS so I have been really pushing myself to spend as much time in the garden as possible. (Oy, please don't ask to see the inside of my house. It is grubby.)

I could show you lots of pictures of bare dirt that has seeds buried 1/4" to 1" underneath it but, of course, that's not too interesting.

I have never been able to grow Brussels sprouts or broccoli without those ishy little green worms ending up in my harvested crop. A short while back, I happened to read something Sue said on her blog, Sue's Garden Journal, on how she covers her beds with Agribon which keeps the little white moths/butterflies (which lay the eggs which turn into the worms) off of her brassicas. Well, I jumped on this bit of information p.d.q. and pestered Sue with a million questions so I could build my own little protective tunnels to enable us to successfully grow broccoli and Brussels sprouts, our two favorite vegetables, and actually EAT them sans worms! Sue couldn't have been more generous or kind or sharing of her knowledge which enabled us to cover two of our raised beds yesterday in much the same way she does. One contains Brussels sprouts and one has the broccoli in it. I am super-excited to see how this turns out.

The blueberries, raspberries and strawberries all look like they will give us a fantastic yield this year. The blueberry bushes are loaded with blossoms. (Bad picture, I know, but I was too pooped to fool around with the lighting focus on the camera to get a better shot.)

One thing I did not get to on my gardening list this past week was weeding the blueberry patch. The picture doesn't show it, but there are weeds sticking their ugly little heads up right within the bushes and waving while sticking out their tongues and taunting me. First of the week, I'll get to this area . . . and show those weeds what for!

Okay, here's a sad situation. I planted our potatoes right before the two-week monsoon we experienced in May. It sure looks as though many of the potato eyes rotted, something they will easily do if they get too much moisture before sprouting. The ones that did manage to sprout look very healthy but we won't get half the crop I was expecting. Crikey. Guess we'll just have to eat more rice this winter.

I got all the cabbage transplanted. Here's a row of red cabbage happy to finally be in the soil instead of in their cramped little pots.

The strawberry patch (until this morning) looked more like a quack grass farm but I attacked it with a vengeance and ripped out every single piece (well, I might have missed one or two or six) of quack grass. The strawberry plants this year are tall and lush and loaded with blossoms. Some have already formed little green berries, and I think the harvest will start two to three weeks early this year.

Well, that's a short summary of some of the gardening that's been keeping me done in, dirty and sweaty this week. I think I've probably got one more week of work before I can say all the outside stuff is under control. Then it will just be keeping the upper hand on the weeds before all the seeds sprout and the plants start shooting up. One more week? Sure hope my tired tuchus can keep going that long!