With insane rain on the plains the garden grows very well.  Unfortunately that applies to weeds as well as plants I want but it’s better than everything dying off.

The pool garden experiment has been very successful and I’m already planning changes for next year to take full advantage of the benefits. The drainage has been great and we’ve been seriously stress testing it over the last month.  We’ve had significant pooling in the pastures but the pool garden has had very short term accumulation only and despite our pile of dirt garden bed strategy only minor erosion.  It doesn’t offer as much wind protection as I was hoping, the winds still come in and swirl around in there but it’s consistently 2-3 degrees warmer in there than outside of the pool.  That’s awesome for the peppers, it’s going to be great for season extension and it’s only mildly annoying for working time.

Because we had to do more prep work we were much later getting started on the pool garden.  Planting of seeds started June 13th, 

Followed by the last of our seedlings and some seed potatoes I picked up June 23rd.

And here we are today.  Radish harvesting is happening every day, peppers are ripening on some plants and just getting started on others, potatoes are flowering and the weed control pumpkin patch is started to leaf out and a couple tiny pumpkins have appeared.  Even the sunflowers have started trying to reach for the sky.

We do have a pool bunny who has figured out that this dip is worth checking out.  He’s chewed the tops off most of the glass gem corn experiment and made himself a bed in the potatoes.  We’ve also got a cucumber beetle issue in there so I need to remember extra marigolds if we put vines in here next year.  The chicks are enjoying the bugs however so it’s not a complete failure.

In the main garden we have already harvested some of our purple bell peppers.  This year I’ve put in two varieties of each colour so I can identify which is our preferred variety for the future. Sweet Black Horse is the thin skinned variety on the left and Purple Beauty is the thicker walled pepper on the right.  Taste wise they’re very similar but in general I do prefer thicker peppers so it’s Purple beauty for next year.

Coming soon red and yellow comparisons!

The main corn patch has been quite happy with the wet weather.  Despite the corn flattening winds we had it’s come back to health with a vengeance.

June 20th it was just a tiny suggestion of a corn patch.

by July 3rd the endless rain had added incredible corn AND weed growth before the wind huffed and puffed and blew them all down.

And by July 19th it’s getting difficult to use myself as a measuring tool.  Most of them are getting close to waist high.  Second planting which is about 3 weeks behind the first is at about the ankle high stage.  Going to be a couple of good waves of corn I think.

Zucchini are starting to fruit, tomatoes are threatening to take over the world (3 weeks without pruning is dangerous to any plants close to the tomatoes), and the potatoes are flowering and looking thick and healthy.  Once we get a few days of sunshine to start ripening things it’s going to be fabulous!

Hope everyone has enjoyed the update and I’ll try and be more prompt for the next one.  

Have a fabulous day!