The Promise of the Future
It's been a busy month! Everything has really come along nicely. I have had to transplant peppers and tomatoes for lack of space in the original beds. We have moved some of the peppers into pots. We have moved others into the main garden bed and also turned the greens bed into an auxiliary tomatoes and pepper haven. We have harvested all of the radishes and daikon radishes. We have harvested snow peas and the pea-pods continue to grow up the chicken-wire trellis. I have planted the melons and the squash are starting to dominate their space. The Trail of Tears beans have grown up the pole and look amazing. The other beans are in all-out battle mode. They battle the squash and out-compete the blue-berries and hazelnut bush. They dominate the recently transplanted tomatoes and peppers. However, I keep them in check. By pruning them regularly, I am able to ensure that the rest of the veggies that I want to grow are getting adequate light. That's really what it's all about at the beginning. The beets are in full swing and will be harvested in a couple of weeks. We will then plant again, beets are hearty and able to thrive into the late fall in Milwaukee. I will do the same with carrots. My borage has come along nicely! I am excited to have it. The leaves are edible and taste like cucumbers. I am looking forward to having them in a salad. Speaking of salad, the greens are loving the planter-boxes on the deck. They get a nice mixture of direct sun and a little shade in the late afternoon when it's really hot. We have harvested the greens three times now since May. We will continue to harvest and replant until the end of the growing season when we will add cold-frames to the system. The potatoes look great above the ground! I hope that they are developing some nice tubers. It's with anticipation that I water them. I hope they are great because they have appeared healthy and have provided me with hope early on when not a lot was coming up. I have two types of Kale as well as Red Cabbage. I am looking forward to using the cabbage in some home-made kimchi. The melons are still small plants with no flowers yet, with temps in the next week forecast around 100*F however, I am not worried that they will take off. Melons love heat and sun and they are going to get a bunch of both. Finally, the pumpkins had to be thinned out. I left only one because the plants are so huge and compete so well with everything in this arrangement. It still looks nice though, so Ellie should get a nice pumpkin for Halloween.
The oaks, the chestnuts and the beech are all doing quite well even though we are in a major dry spell. The Burr Oak has really responded well to the pruning and and hugelkultur. This further reinforces my theory that compost is a much more complete fertilizer and innoculent than any that is produced by a chemical company. We need to be making out own compost and using it fertilize our plants. This will create an urban ecosystem. We need biodiversity on the street-level as well as the soil level. In the case of the Burr Oak, the compost that is driving this amazing garden is leaching compost tea down on the roots of the Oak every time I water the gardens. The results have been that the tree has put on almost a foot of growth so far this spring! That's almost unheard of for a semi-mature Burr Oak, and especially in a drought.
We have added marigolds! We put some in every bed in order to attract bees and other pollinators. I did not start them, or the impatiens from seed. I purchased them and really just needed to have some other flowers in the garden to attract pollinators
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The oaks, the chestnuts and the beech are all doing quite well even though we are in a major dry spell. The Burr Oak has really responded well to the pruning and and hugelkultur. This further reinforces my theory that compost is a much more complete fertilizer and innoculent than any that is produced by a chemical company. We need to be making out own compost and using it fertilize our plants. This will create an urban ecosystem. We need biodiversity on the street-level as well as the soil level. In the case of the Burr Oak, the compost that is driving this amazing garden is leaching compost tea down on the roots of the Oak every time I water the gardens. The results have been that the tree has put on almost a foot of growth so far this spring! That's almost unheard of for a semi-mature Burr Oak, and especially in a drought.
We have added marigolds! We put some in every bed in order to attract bees and other pollinators. I did not start them, or the impatiens from seed. I purchased them and really just needed to have some other flowers in the garden to attract pollinators
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Here are the pictures of the progress. Thanks for checking in!
The Greens (now Auxiliary) Bed:
There are tons more pictures in the next post!
Check out my next post for more pictures. The amount of pictures was too much for the blogger program, so I have to create another post.
The Greens (now Auxiliary) Bed:
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| At the start, only the arugula came up. |
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| Still waiting... |
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| I had an idea! We had extra tomatoes and squash, maybe they would take in the greens bed... |
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| ...the squash didn't take. However, the tomatoes did. So I added peppers too. |
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| Finally a marigold to attract pollinators. |
There are tons more pictures in the next post!
Check out my next post for more pictures. The amount of pictures was too much for the blogger program, so I have to create another post.
***A note on the Greens bed: I had trouble getting the greens bed going. I assume it's a light issue. I have decided to use the bed as an auxiliary garden. I had peppers and tomatoes that were getting over-topped. I took the under-achievers and put them in the auxiliary garden with the arugula which has bolted and gone to seed.
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