Over-birdened

The harvest is going well. Our coworkers may be getting sick of squash and cucumbers very soon. The biggest news is that we have been chosen as the 2007 home for a sparrow's nest! I am pretty sure they are not finches. Anyway, they have secretly built a nest within one of the tomato cages. The mother feeds 2 babies and there is 1 unopened egg in the nest. The mother is somewhat tolerant of us getting close to pick basil, but usually she gets spooked and flies to an adjacent fence to spy on us. As long as she doesn't dive-bomb us like the crows at PSU I will be happy.

Back from Vacation

Our vacation to Northern Ontario was very relaxing... except for the frequent concerns about the weather in Boston and the state of our garden. We were unable to find a substitute waterer for the gardens and were forced to do the Rain Dance in Huntsville, ON. Unfortunately, all of the rain fell in ON and the garden was left dry. It turned out ok afterall, the plants are large and could sustain themselves through a semi-drought. Here are some of the first fruits of the garden! The green squash are WAY TOO BIG, they should have been picked a few days ago but we were gone. The larger of the squash is easily over a foot long. We also harvested some turnips, onions and basil. The tomatoes are still 2 to 3 weeks away from being ready.





On a sad note: The LCD screen on our canon sureshot is busted and it is now very difficult to take photos with the tiny viewfinder. We are working on a solution, but please forgive us if the photos seem a little off for the next few weeks. I'll try to take good shots of the garden soon, you will not believe the difference compared to the previous photos. Enjoy!

Bohnanza

We enjoy games and one of our favorites is called "Bohnanza" but we affectionately call it the "Bean Game". The official game site is here but that is a pretty weak description compared to the wikipedia site. I bring this up because today we built our new bean support (V2.0). Version 1.0 is visible in the pictures of garden plot A and was simply the old door to our garden. V2.0 will have 4x the surface area of V1.0 and should yield 4x the number of beans! Beans planted that will use the support: peas, yellow wax and kentucky (string bean). We also planted soybeans, but they are small bushes and do not need the support. Eventually we will put strings or rope across V2.0 (the white pvc pipes shown below in garden plot B) that will support the beans as they grow 6+ ft up.

Spring Cleaning

The garden plots have been cleaned, tilled and fertilized with mulch and organic fertilizer. We would have started planting last weekend, but the weather did not cooperate. This weekend we will hit the dirt first thing saturday morning.


Plot B looks a little smaller, but that is because we didn't weed block the entire area. There was quite a bit of straw in the garden leftover from the previous owner, so we used that to cover the left quarter of the garden. This will be Paula's Pumpkin Patch.

Warning

I don't want to upset our loyal pottery followers, but I must warn you that we do not plan on taking pottery classes during the summer months. The reasoning: we don't want to spend summer nights in a basement when we could be outside nurturing our garden. To keep you amused and to prevent the Pottery blog from going dormant, we have decided to gradually replace pottery updates with garden updates. While this post represents the first garden post, the pottery posts will continue through mid-June. Thank you for your time, we hope you enjoy.