Whew it is hot out there! I never seem to get anything done and because I’m fair skinned it’s really easy for me to do too much. Just like I’m trying to keep on top of everything this year I’m also trying not to get sunburned and sunsick every time I play in the garden. So I try to limit myself to about an hour a day. I’m teaching myself that’s it’s okay to nor get everything done in one sitting (it helps when it comes to housework and writing too. Do what you can, rather than trying to get everything done at once.)

So, first up, veggie patch 1 (the one we put in the year we moved in) with the three sisters planting.

It does need weeding, but there are more veggie plants than weeds. It doesn’t look that way because of the structure of the planting. Beans are planted with the corn so they can use the stalks as a trellis and the squash alternate with the beans and corn in mounds. They grow fast! Real fast. Corn sprouts in 1-2 weeks (if you don’t have seedlings by week 2 you need to replant, like I had to) and squash sprouts and grows just as fast. The beans are a little slower, but only by a few days. In the pictures below you can see the sizes of both kinds of plant and they were planted the same day.

In the next week I’ll pull up the morning glory sprouts that have also started in the plot and then mulch the area with wet newspaper and my neighbor’s grass clippings (we mulch ours into the lawn).

As for plot 2 which I just cleared this year the tomatoes are finally increasing in size (I don’t know if it was transplant shock or the weather or what but they were healthy and just not doing anything for most of May. But the broccoli! Here it is three weeks ago:

And here it is today:

Broccoli and corn are both quick growing, two harvest a year plants. In the next month these plants will be full size and likely ready to harvest. I’ll actually harvest, then pull them up and plant another round of broccoli to be harvested in late September. You can do that with corn too, plant seeds 2-3 weeks apart to have a continuous supply, but I’m doing the three sisters this year so there will be no space.

Here’s the new veggie plot:

In the next few days I’ll be adding a cucumber plant to it, then spraying on fertilizer and re-paper and mulching it (see the bare spots? That’s from birds stealing the paper and straw and the materials moving during storms. You want to keep the bare soil covered because it helps suppress weeds, keep in moisture and makes what weeds there are weaker and easier to pull up.)

Now for the upside down planter experiment. Here’s the planters May 10th:

And here they are now:

As you can see they do not continue hanging upside down, but try to grow up just like right side up plants. You can also see I have some mini peppers there and in the last one…

Yup, that’s the first ripe fruit of 2009 for me. Of course it is small (not as small as the potatoes I once grew, which were rather like large peas.) I don’t know if it is because the plants had been through so much, or because of the container, but we will find out since there are plenty more growing green fruits and flowers on each plant.