Garden Update

I bet when you woke up this morning your first thought was, I wonder how Janet's garden is doing?  Oddly I woke up with the same thought!

For the most part things are now doing well.  I think the tomatoes grew about a foot over the weekend after a good 2" of rain.

There are some small black spots on some of the bottom leaves so I think I may spray with some fungicide later today or tomorrow, it seems a little early for this but it's been such a strange spring weatherwise.  The green beans are doing exactly as they should and working their way up the stringers.

Usually with just a little training they move right up the correct string.  I tried to really thin them to one plant per string, anything else just gets too heavy mid-summer.  I'm also impressed that my lines and stringers have held up amazingly well over time.  I knew the horizontals would hold up since I used some coated heavy duty wire, but the plain string verticals I thought for sure I would have to re-do each year.  Other than some minor repairs they have held strong for 3 years.

Most of the squash and zucchini are doing well, I may need to thin them one more time as well.  I'm hoping to avoid the squash vine borers this year with an early application of some sevin dust on the stems but they have hit me every year so far so all I can do is going into it with crossed fingers.

My poor pitiful homegrown from seed peppers just aren't doing well.  They are so tiny, getting eaten by some sort of bug and just don't seem to have any staying power compared to the store bought plants.  Here I thought buying seed from one of the foremost authorities in peppers (New Mexico State Univ agriculture dept) was a good idea but now that I think about it, these seeds were probably bred/created to grow in that area and not here.  I'm hoping for just one of each of the 4 varieties I grew possibly survive.  This is down from about 20 plants each.
The store bought pepper plants on the other hand are doing quite well.  You can see in most of these pictures that I am now using an entire system of soaker hoses instead of a sprinkler.  They say this is much better for the garden and it's a LOT easier as well.  I have a total of 5 hoses and one splitter so watering the entire garden is as easy as turning on the hose and going out one time to flip the splitter.

Finally I introduce you to Copernicus...

Sort of freaky isn't he?  I rescued him from Leslie's parent's shed where he was doomed for garage sale-dom.  I think he's perfect for guarding the garden when I'm not around.  Although so far he isn't doing a great job.   We have a new resident coyote who seems to come by most days and tear at least one thing up...I'm working on rounding up another garden mascot soon-stay tuned!