Time to do a rain dance

It’s been so incredibly dry here the past two weeks.  My garden and pastures need rain so badly, but all we keep getting are hours of lightening and thunder followed by two drops of rain.  Everyone around us is getting rain, in fact my hay guy still hasn’t gotten all his hay cut because it’s been so wet at his place – 15 minutes away.  So when I had water left over from filling up the horse troughs today I backed the truck down to the garden and used a watering can to water everything.    It only took two hours.  Only.

Ack.

I looked back at the garden tour post from July 9th of last year, and now I’m terribly depressed.  My garden is so far behind this year, it just isn’t funny.   I haven’t had much time to weedeat around the beds, pull weeds, cover things with remay to protect from bugs, or fertilize with manure tea.  I’m lucky I got everything planted!

Oh wait… I didn’t get everything planted.  I have a flat of strawflowers and four more tomato plants that need a home. 

I say again, ACK.

I wanted to share with you my depressing garden so that you can all look at your own gardens and feel better about them.   I’m just selfless like that.

 

Just look at my poor pathetic corn and summer squash.  The squash bugs have already taken their toll and killed a few of the plants, the rest are starting to show the telltale wilt.

 

My sweet bell peppers were three times this size this time last year.

 

I sowed the fennel late, then the chickens were accidentally let into the garden by a visitor and they scratched up half the crop.

 

My potatoes are doing surprisingly well considering I have not hilled them up or covered them with remay and the potato beetles are having a grand time at the buffet.  I’m not expecting a big potato harvest, that’s for sure.

 

I will say one thing for this year’s garden – the soil must be ideal because I had so many thousands of volunteer plants that they were overwhelming the weeds in numbers.  Tomatoes, Pineapple Tomatillos, Litchi Tomatoes, Chamomile, lettuce, Shoofly plant, dill, melons, and Calendula have all made appearances throughout the garden, even in beds where they weren’t planted last year.  Even outside of the beds, where they will be whipped into submission by the weedeater.  Eventually. 

 

This is it for the carrots.  I actually sowed about 1,000 seeds before the garden fence went up, but the chickens took care of that crop for me.

 

Same with the kohlrabi and beets.  I think I may have four kohlrabi seedlings slowly growing somewhere, and only a few more golden beets.

The good news, is that this is the first year I’ve ever grown cabbage and so far, so good.

 

Out of the billion or so Litchi tomato seedlings that came up this year, I left three.  The potato beetles and flea beetles are doing their best, but it just isn’t enough to stop these thorny beasts. 

 

 

Oh, and more bad news.  It’s time to break out the canner already.  The collards and chard are calling to me.   I’m really not ready to start canning yet.  Honestly, I’m not.

 

 

Oh well.  As depressing as the garden is, at least I always have my little buddy to cheer me up and keep me company.

 

That’s a face only a mother could love!