Thursday, June 10, 2010

What a Difference a Week Makes

Or, maybe it's really a month that makes the difference.  Our main garden bed is now 2000 square feet.  Potatoes and garlic are planted elsewhere, and there's another bed for the three sisters.  This bed is mainly just for annual vegetable crops with a few flowers and perennial herbs tucked in.  Every time I visit the garden, I see something new.  It's not always something very welcome: more weeds, beets nibbled down by rabbits, corn or onions pulled wantonly out of the ground by crows.  But there are happy events too.  The bean tendrils grown long enough to twine up the supports I put in for them.  The first baby zucchini of the year.  A hummingbird moth at the sage blooms.

But despite the daily evidence of change, I find it hard to see things really changing over the larger scale, even when I know that monumental work has gone into those 2000 square feet.  So I decided to do a little time lapse photography.  I've been taking a picture of the garden each Thursday.  At first even the photographs didn't show me much.  But lately the changes are becoming more obvious.  (Click any of the images below to embiggen.)


May 20th - Bean poles are in at the back, but major cleanup and planting remains to be done.  Notice all the weeds and lack of anything planted on most of the right side.


May 27th - Weeds seriously knocked back, significant mulching done, tomatoes planted but still small.


week 3 - June 3rd - Tomatoes hard to see but beginning to ramp up, eggplants and peppers in the back still small.  Unloved brassicas from last year are cleared out of the center aisle as the bees finish with the blossoms.


Week 4 - June 10th.  Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and zucchini are up towards the back.  The comfrey (front left) has gotten a severe hack back and is already regrowing.  The lettuce and spinach now have a covered row (that white thing in the back on the left, it's open on the north side) to grow in. With some luck, the soil under there will stay cool enough to let us enjoy the greens through the summer.  This year's kale (just right of the entrance) is looking ready for harvest already. I'm not holding out much hope for the parsnip seeds due to the unseasonably hot weather we had in late May-early June.  I expect by next week the beans at the far end of the garden may have done enough climbing to be visible from where the picture is taken.

If I keep up with the Thursday picture taking, I'll try to update these observations from time to time.

Oh, and this is for absolutely no other reason than my cat cracks me up. I thought I'd share.  Mojo during the heat wave about ten days ago.  He's such a doofus.

That's probably all I got for this week. It's been pillar to post with house and garden work lately.

10 comments:

Faye @ GreenOrganicMama.com said...

Kate, your cat is too cute. LOL!

Love your garden! We just recently bought our first home. It's small, but eventually I'll do some container gardening on the patio :)

Chat soon!

Faye @ GreenOrganicMama.com

Wendy said...

I love your bean pole design. It looks so very cool! I hope you'll share a picture of it once the beans have started climbing ;).

The picture of Mojo almost makes me want to get another kitty ;). Too funny!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I laughed out loud when I came to Mojo's photo!

Kristeva

Anonymous said...

The garden looks great. I like the time lapse idea. Love the pic of Mojo!

Kate said...

Faye, container gardening rocks, especially while you try to figure out what's going to work in the ground at a new property.

Wendy, thanks. It was just what I improvised from the old bamboo canes left over from last year, plus two metal stakes and a lot of nylon twine. I hope it works out well. We'll see, and I'll post about how it works, either way.

Kristeva, glad to share a laugh with you.

Thanks, Ali. I think time lapses are pretty cool, but as this is not automated, I've got to have a good memory for it to work. Why not try it in your garden too?

Konnie said...

I love to see how the garden evolved. Great pictures!
Konnie

Staci@LifeAtCobbleHillFarm said...

What a wonderful garden! Isn't it great to see the progress each week and sometimes each day. We've had a lot of rain this past week and now the sun is shining bright so my garden is growing by leaps and bounds.
-Staci

String Theory said...

Just a quick pea update, as requested. I bought a 2kg bag of whole dried peas from the ethnic foods section at the grocery store. There must be thousands in there! I planted 63 in a pot the size of a shoe box and so far 58 are up and growing strongly. I have now planted some more, so we can have yummy peas shoots every week for cents.

Andy Anderson said...

I love that cable design in the back of your garden is the neatest thing! I think it is so beautiful.

My garden just had 5 pigs put into it to till and fertilize it. After we harvest the pigs we are going to tarp it till next year so it can cook and not allow weeds. Right now I am using my strawberry patch.

Cute kitty. Chuckled.
Cheryl

Kate said...

KJ, thanks.

L@CHF, it is indeed nice to see progress, especially when it's not just the march of the weeds. Hope your garden is doing well and that you get a good mix of sun and rain.

Queen, thanks so much for reporting back. I had wondered occasionally whether store beans would be able to germinate or not. Thanks for doing the experiment for me, and it's nice to see positive results.

Cheryl, thanks. It was just what I improvised this year. We'll see how well it works. The beans are just now beginning to twine up the lower cords. Nice thing is that once one of them has a grip, the others can use it for support too. Five pigs! That's some pigaeration for sure, as the Salatins would say.