Does a post consisting entirely of the words “sad and pathetic” suffice? Oh, fine. Let me wallow in garden-pity while I regale you with my tale of woe.

Eep! Ignore that water runoff, will ya? Thought we’d fixed that!

That’s the view from the front. Not quite as pretty as most of the larger sunflowers have either cut or picked through by the birds. We’re leaving them up until the smaller heads are gone too. I’ve really enjoyed the birds this summer, although now that their food source is dwindling, they are beginning to forage in places I wish they wouldn’t.

Here’s the views inside the gate. These photos doesn’t do justice: it’s worse than it looks. The cukes have all died but we’re leaving them in place as mulch for now. The ants demolished the corn, and the pumpkins. We got what we could from the plants but it wasn’t much (handfuls of chick feed and one pumpkin). They are working on the melons now.

I’d like to blame it all on the ants but I really can’t. It seems no matter how much we compost or amend the soil, everything is depleted of nutrients. My best, uneducated guess would be based on how green and lush the ash tree looks. I’ve never seen it more beautiful! I’m sure it’s really enjoying our added attention to its soil, even at the expense of everything else.

Based off our “success” this year, I think replanning and replanting the front with nitrogen-building perennials is the best way to go. Once they are established, plugging in some edible annuals won’t be a total waste of time.

Here’s the backyard orchard. It’s doing pretty well with several deep waterings a week, although the more shallow-rooted alyssum underneath didn’t agree. We may go back to drip irrigation so that we can plant more under the trees. There is one tree that seems to be the least happy and most attacked. This morning I noticed many of it’s leaves seem to be stripped. None of other trees have a mark. I can’t find a sign of anything but I haven’t tested the soil yet. Hmm…

The 2×2 square foot gardens in the middle are “compost gardens” – as in, we amended the existing soil with compost, added some nitrogen building legumes and watched a whole bunch of other plants pop up from the compost.

Above would be the raised beds. Remember the last photo? Apparently, the heat doesn’t stop the tomatoes from growing. Unfortunately they aren’t growing much along the lines of edible. Our basil is still rocking, as are the jalapenos. But we’ve only gotten enough grape-sized tomatoes for a couple snacks and a meal or two, and only enough romas for ONE spaghetti dinner. But I’m too nervous to prune and they are newly covered in blooms so we’re letting them do their thing.

Hopefully we’ll add more raised beds this fall around the “orchard” and onto the other side of the house. Lots of trellis in mind to climb anything possible.

This is the tortoise habitat which houses one of the grapevines. We’ve finally made it through a summer without losing our entire vine to grapeleaf skeletonizers, but it was close. Most of our desert plants have died, except for the honeysuckle shown near the bottom.

:sigh:

There ya have it. I’m trying hard not to be depressed over it. It has been a learning experience at least.

Hot, humid, intolerable to be in between the hours of 7:30am to 7:30pm. That’s our garden right now. Our temps are hovering around 110F with a mid-month peak of 118F (48C). The added humidity has been what’s really pushed us over the miserable edge.

Our tomatoes are very stunted, our corn is anemic, our melons are stagnant. The ants and aphids seem to be the most prolific commodities in our yard and we (Justin, the beneficials and I) can’t seem to catch up or get ahead.

Not all bad news, however. We have more jalapenos than one family needs. Our basil are all very happy campers. Our cukes have only just begun to slow down. And our tomatoes – stunted though they are – still taste yummy. We’ve also harvested quite a few sunflower heads for drying (but we left plenty for the birds).

Soil fertility is still our biggest adversary. The fact that anything is even growing at all is a real testament to the miracle of life. We spent last weekend with an organic fertilizer recipe and this weekend we’ll spend our time with an organic foliar feed recipe. We’ve seen some growth and recovery from our efforts thus far but we still have a long way to go.

I’ve seen so many exciting and yummy garden photos lately. One of these days mine will look just as abundant!

Here are a few recent photos:

Now that Justin and I have read Gaia’s Garden, we’ve been rethinking so much about this garden. We have a lot of new plans that we hope to get started on this fall when the weather dips back down. Justin has promised that we would soon work on a post together to share our thoughts on the book and how it’s shaped our ideas in regards to our own yard and goals. (Co-blogging! Yay!) We have other exciting additions to our “homestead” to share soon too! (Good news! Yay!)

Update: Gaia’s Garden review found here.

How is your garden growing…Or not?

It’s rather frustrating to take photos and plan a garden post, only to forget or become distracted or have other things to share first, then to go back to those photos when you’re ready to post only to have them be outdated. Zeb spent the night with a friend, so before we pick him up and celebrate Mother’s Day with our family, I figured I’d try to get updated photos and post this before they were no longer relevant.

Things are growing like crazy (or simply driving us crazy). We planted our tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings outside several weeks ago, have sown a variety of other seed and have lost some things in the meantime. It’s been a busy few weeks, so I’ll try not to miss anything. But I’m sure I will anyway.

This is the view from the backdoor of our raised beds. The spinach is going to seed so we harvested and froze what we could until we start it back up in the fall. The broccoli has never produced more than leaves and has yet to go to seed, so it’s hanging out. The tomato, jalapenos, and bell peppers are in the mix. We also planted seed for basil and oregano which is just popping up. The two containers in the front hold our peppermint and spearmint (in containers because it’s invasive). You can see some nasturtiums coming up next to one of the containers. Not pictured is the rosemary, also in a container and two other containers of moth beans (more below).

Our tomato seedlings are doing much better now that they are “home”. Unfortunately, I didn’t use markers on the tomatoes and instead made notes on paper of which variety is where…and then lost the paper. Live and learn…I’ve since began to mark everything with the shims Justin brings home from work.

We’ve been hand picking a lot of insects, mostly off the broccoli. We sprayed our grapevine with Diatomaceous Earth as soon as it began sprouting though, in hopes we don’t lose it to Grape Leaf Skeletonizers this year.

Our fruit trees are doing well. The Santa Rosa Plum has been getting attacked by an invisible insect, so we used Diatomaceous Earth on its leaves and it seems to be recovering. The grass has become obnoxious, popping through the mulch. You can see in the lower right where I’ve begun to dig it out a bit each day. I also took out the tortoise’s dandelions because they were giving Justin severe allergy attacks. Man it looks messy in that photo.

These two photos are of our corn – the tallest is the popcorn, started a month ago. The sweet corn isn’t pictured; it’s only about 2 inches right now but coming up fast. The other is two of the Three Sisters – corn and pole beans. The squash is still germinating.

Our sunflowers are doing well. This is the second tallest – about 3 feet tall and a week behind our tallest. Others average around 12-18 inches, depending on the amount of sun they are receiving.

Our artichoke is also doing well since we fertilized and Justin’s potato experiment is…well, experimenting. It came up from buried compost so he decided to try and mound it with a cage to hold it together. It’s died off but is now coming back. I’m kinda hoping it dies off again, so I can remove that giant cage.

I planted my moth beans in three containers and I’ll probably plant more in the dryer areas of the yard soon. I’m hoping in the containers they won’t get overwatered, since they like very little moisture – perfect for our climate. Pictured would be another Janky trellis of ours.

My Scarlett Emporer’s are doing great. As soon as they found the trellis they shot up. I only wish my other beans were doing as well. We’ve been finding gaggles of pill bugs eating off the newly emerged sprouts. Those little bastards. We’re going to plant more this week with Diatomaceous Earth in and around the soil in hopes it will ward them off.

Our herbs are slowing sprouting, as are several melons, a few beans that managed to escape the soil before the bugs found them and cucumbers. The pumpkins are growing well, also and appear to be forming flowers already.

This week I’ll continue working on removing the grass from around the trees, fertilize with compost, direct sow some tomatoes and beans, weed, move the moth beans into fuller sun, purchase some hay for mulching and hopefully trim some more tree from shading our plants in the front yard. We might do another soil test, as well as purchase strawberry plants, since our seed refuses to come up, indoors or out.