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gardeners, how's it growing?
I'm hoping it will rain tonight b/c I don't feel like watering. 
but, aside from my onions & garlic which aren't bulbing up properly, everything is flourishing. Thanks to some nesties (ahem, ebeth & pixie) I'm growing green beans this year...best thing ever! I've already made some dilly beans & had them in sides & as a side. And they are still going & going & going! I'm surprised my lettuce hasn't bolted yet (deer tongue. I think pixie maybe recommended this too?) I've got lots of little tomatoes, but they are kind of in a shady spot this year so I think it will be awhile for them to ripen.
Also, I know that some consider it tacky, but I've planted essentially a rainbow of coneflowers in my yard & it's just beautiful. I also get to look forward to lots of goldfinches in the fall/winter as I leave the dried flowers/seed heads for them.
so, thank you all dear gardening nesties for your advice thus far this year! how is your garden growing & do you have a super star crop or ornamental to recommend?
Re: gardeners, how's it growing?
You'd think I would have learned last year when my cukes used my corn as a trellis and pulled it down, but no. I planted some sunflowers in the middle of my raised bed this year to attract more pollinators and just to be pretty. Despite all of the fancy trellising I bought, the cukes used the sunflowers as a trellis and pulled them down. Similarly, instead of Girls Gone Wild - I have Squash Gone Wild. I think I may have planted too many. They're huge! They're also avoiding the fancy trellises and spilling out into the yard, covering the other parts of the bed.
About half of my tomatoes have green fruit. Some are still in flower.
My pear tree is full of fruit and we've had to prop some of the branches up so that they don't hang to the ground. Only a few McIntosh apples this year. No golden delicious, but my Golden tree was damaged last year from the fruit being too heavy for its tiny limbs.
I tried sweet potatoes this year and only 1 slip seems to have made it of the 10 or so I planted. I already picked early crops of spinach and lettuce.
Everything else is doing really well. Marigold and zinnia are in bloom or coming up (planted deck boxes late). My new stargazer lillies are beautiful and I've had one round of blooms on my rose bushes. For once, my hanging pots seem to be making it. And the deer have only destroyed 2 lillies and pretty much ignored my hosta so far. I'm going to spray more Liquid Fence because I have additional lillies about to bloom now. The day lillies I ordered off of ebay didn't do too well. I'm going to give them another year before trying anything new in that area though.
allipastor- my cukes are also out.of.control. but it sounds like your garden is doing awesome! I've heard you can prune off the lower leaves of summer squash. would that help you?
I just blogged last night how our garden is growing
we are harvesting kale and yellow squash and a few peppers so far. Kale was seriously easy to plant. I'd recommend it for people interested in trying it next year. It sprouted in about 6 days and we planted it around Mother's Day.
Tomatoes have plenty of little green guys growing
We have one tiny eggplant growing. It's cute!
I have a very wild honeydew. Seriously I think it needed several feet all to itself. I guess I learned something for next year!
I'd love my cucumbers to grow. I planted slicing and pickling and since I collected dill seed last year when my plants bolted I'd love to try pickling with some.
I just bought another coneflower because my one plant looked lonely.
I'm jealous of your beans. I wish we had planted some
Green onions & radish did well and carrots are trucking away. Deer tongue lettuce (yep, me) did great. It bolted, but still tastes fine.
We have some flowers, but no fruit yet, on bush beans (green and purple), tomato, squash, jalapeno, and pumpkin. We've got greens but no flowers on cossack pineapple and eggplant, and bell peppers. Our garlic is about to flower, but the heads we've pulled are are very small. Our herbs are doing great.
This is my first year attempting a vegetable garden. Our green bell peppers and jalapenos are doing awesome. Strawberries are still producing. My 'early boys' have green tomatoes, the other tomato plants are still flowering. My red bell peppers don't look like they will produce anything. I got the squash and zucchini in the ground late, but they look promising. fingers crossed I don't kill anything.
Question: The garden was dug up and fresh soil (organic) was laid down. I bought plant food, but am unsure if I need it or not? Any advice?
We don't have a garden, we have a jungle. The squash are massive. We've been harvesting patty pan and zucchini a few times a week and we have lots of baby and bigger spaghetti squash. The cucumber vines are running wild, I know there are some fruit on them, but none are yet big enough to pick. The tomatoes have tons of small green fruits and flowers. The peppers also have fruit. I've never been successful with sweet peppers, but I am keeping my fingers crossed this year. The carrots, lettuce and swiss chard have been shaded out by the gigantic squash plants but they seem to be doing OK. It's keeping the latter two from bolting and the carrots have some mini roots. The beans have also been largely shaded, but there are still tons of little purple fruit on them. Blueberries have been slowly ripening and DD has been slowly eating them. We've finished harvesting the sugar snaps and radishes, I wish we had grown more sugar snaps, next time, I'll plant triple the amount. I'm excited for my onions, the foliage is huge adn it appears they've all bulbed out really well. I've never grown them before, so I am trying to figure out when to pull them. The pumpkins have flowers, no fruit. The watermelon is still not flowering and the two volunteer squash like plants are just about to flower. I am uber curious as to what they are. We once had a volunteer butternut squash take over our backyard and produce more fruit than we could reasonably eat in a year. I can't wait to add a new bed next year. There is so much more I want to plant and grow.
Oh man, I'm not going to plant the WHOLE yard. I wouldn't be able to GIVE that many veggies away. And my H doesn't like veggies, so I think we'd be buried under the sheer mass. But a nice manageable garden, that's what I'm hoping for.
I always work compost into the soil as I plant, so I don't really fertilize. You probably don't *need* fertilizer, but if you are inspired to do so, follow the directions on the packet (or maybe dilute it a bit).
My Food Blog
Had several harvests of spinach prior to bolting. Didn't have much luck with radishes. Harvested a few and the rest went to seed. Kohlrabis are currently being harvested and we're enjoying them -- peel (sometimes share) and enjoy!
Cukes are slowly growing. I've been training them to grow along the fence we added for them. We'll be swimming in them later...planted 8!
Zucchini plants are looking great, but so far all the zukes reach about 3" and then start to yellow and rot. Not sure what the issue is yet.
We have 2 sweet peppers on and the jalapeno peppers are flowering. Lots of Roma tomatoes and not as many Celebrities.
Flower garden is looking pathetic. The blackeyed susan blushing susie vine didn't ever come up from seed. Only 4 of the cosmos (planted at least a dozen seeds) came up. The fun whirligig zinnias are a disappointment so far. Supposed to be random crazy colors/stripes and 4" blooms. I have a white 1" bloom and a yellow 1.5" bloom. I'm hoping as summer progresses, the blooms get bigger.
Cilantro is trying to bolt. Basil and Oregano are doing well. The chives haven't grown much yet -- I have garlic chives and regular chives.
So far the garden pests seem to be chipmunks and slugs. My knock-out rose was briefly attacked by white flies, but took care of that with Sevin powder before they reached our garden.
PAIF/SAIF welcome
PCOS-IR / Hypothyroid
IUI#1-3: 100mg Clomid + Ovidrel trigger = BFN
I would have to *find* the lower leaves to be able to trim them off. LOL. This weekend, I'm going to wade in there and try tying them to the trellises to see if that works/helps. I just put the trellises in place and thought they would naturally vine up them, but they didn't (or at least not effectively).
I built my own trellis along the back of my SFG using the plan in the book and then I added this along my front row for the cukes: http://www.gardeners.com/Cucumber-Trellis-Vegetable-Support/VegetableGardening_Supports,37-476RS,default,cp.html
I planted the squash all in one end and put the tall pea fence up around them, but they are ignoring the posts and latching onto everything else: http://www.gardeners.com/Expandable-Pea-Fence/VegetableGardening_Supports,35-061RS,default,cp.html