Sweet Summer Rain!
We went about two months without rain in the Greater Milwaukee Area. I had to water the garden with a hose daily or risk losing everything. All of the yards around the city were brown. The hugelkultur project has done quite well in the drought. The Burr Oak is the real achievement. In such a bad drought year the maturing Quercus macrocarpa had put on a foot of twig growth! We never watered the tree directly, but the runoff from watering the garden daily was full of nutrients from the high-quality compost we used to kick-start the soil building process. Mature shade trees really benefit from getting a little compost on their roots every year or so. Here are a couple of photos of the oak.
We did water regularly. The rain finally came last night. It was nice and steady and fell for a couple of hours until late morning today. It was such a relief. I prefer the rain to water the garden as the water doesn't contain the chemicals that come from the tap. But beggars can't be choosers and I had little option if I desired to have a productive garden. That said...
The transplants all did really well. Even the much-maligned Greens Bed has been transformed into a productive garden. I transplanted tomatoes there. The result was a surprise. The space originally didn't seem to get enough light. Now however, it has tomatoes! I am excited also to report that there is dill in the same low-light garden bed. Here are some photos.
Moving on to the main hugelkultur bed. All of the transplants have taken off and most are producing flowers or some fruit. The tomatoes have looked pretty wilty since they were transplanted. However, there are tomatoes on the vines so I am not too concerned. I have two large squash going and two melons. My borage looks beautiful as do the marigolds. I have had to trim back the melons and squash and erect barriers between them and the peppers. I am confident that the peppers will do well. They are already flowering and the fruit is starting to come. I am proud of the peppers and tomatoes because they were started by seed and outside. Here are some photos.
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| Pepper and tomato transplants along with marigolds. The Cherokee Trail of Tears bean is in the background. Surrounding the chicken-wire enclosure are squash and melons. |
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| Borage is the flower in the middle of this photo. |
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| The marigolds are attracting a lot of bees. We have a number of different types of bees too. We have Honey Bees, Bumble Bees, and some type of solitary ground bee. |
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| Squash! |
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| Butternut Squash. |
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| I think this is a pumpkin... |
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| Musk melon. |
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| Honey Dew melon. |
We harvested the beets, and potatoes. The peas were finished in the three straight weeks of temps in the 100* F range. We got about three pounds of potatoes from the pots. I am going to start another round of them soon. Once the main garden bed is done growing squash and melons, or if the tomatoes or peppers in there die, I will replant beets, carrots, and radishes for fall. Once we're into September, I will replant peas.
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| The harvest: beans, dandelion greens, potatoes and beets. We also recently harvested carrots, peas and the greens. |
The Salsa Garden is a huge success... so far. The tomatoes are about five and half feet tall and full of fruit and flowers! The peppers in there are about two and a half feet tall. Some of them have large peppers already! All of them have a number of flowers. This bodes well for the future! Here are some photos of the Salsa garden.
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| It's no joke! Those tomatoes are almost as tall as me and I am 5'11" tall! |
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| Sweet peppers. |
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| Anaheim Chile. |
The heat torched the peas and the lettuce. I am going to replant the lettuce and wait on the peas till September. My next post should be pretty interesting. This season has been pretty good for growing peppers and tomatoes and I really looking forward to all the salsas and chilies that I a going to make. I will keep you posted. As always please comment on the post!
