Sunday Morning Weeding/Weed-Eating

Sunday was a much more productive day around the farm even though we only worked the first half of day. And even though most of the morning was spent weeding, we did take inventory of all the many blooms perking up.

The squash and zucchini have lots of big blooms...

And some baby squash too...

There are tons of blooms on the cucumbers!

Miraculously enough, even my eggplant had a purple bloom. Why is this a shock? Because something has been eating holes into the leaves of my two eggplant plants pretty much since we planted them. The jury is still out whether they will actually produce any fruit.

The long rows of peas are looking so good! And you can see my new baby corn sprouts coming up to the right of the peas.

Hubby did a bunch of weed-eating around the perimeter of the garden plot/area... with all of the rain the grass and weeds have just taken over! And the dirt is just too mushy to drive a lawnmower on.

Don't forget the Supervisor of all weeding and weed-eating!

Found a couple of apples on the new Fuji apple trees...

But, unfortunately, we also found a bunch of japanese beetle on the Fuji apple leaves eating there way around them... (Sorry for the blurry photo... but, you get the picture) Definitely going to have to do something with the beetles before they eat the entire tree!

And finally, we discovered the cucumbers coming in! They grow so fast with all the rainwater.

P.S.
The pumpkins are starting to grow their runners. :) Can you see them?

Grow Grow Grow!

With Hubby being under the weather most of the weekend we did not get much done around the farm on Saturday. But, with the rain we had on Thursday night, the garden is a bustling!

Would you look at how big that one zucchini plant is???!!



Squash are getting bigger!



Finally saw our first zucchini piece...



You can see how high the corn is with Hubby standing in it.



I did a little weeding down around the new corn sprouts before I got too hot in the blazing sun. But, check out how high the peas are next to me!



Here are the corn sprouts once the weeds are pulled.



I did have a little episode later in the evening on Saturday after I went back to lock up... I went into the garden just to look around in the evening light and came across a strange insect inside of a hole in the ground about 2 feet from the cucumber row.



And then 10 feet from this over near the raised beds I found this.



Of course, this one is dead and the one in the hole was not. And I then, of course, freaked out thinking that these are some kind of garden beetle that is going to eat my entire garden in one swoop overnight being that these are about the size of a chicken egg. Further research has informed me that these are commonly referred to as a "Hercules beetle" and like decaying wood and plant sap. Supposedly they should not be threat to our garden...but, would you look at the size of those things? And those two horn claws on the front of them would scare anybody! Very scary stuff. They better stay far, far away. Period.

Garden Clean-Up

Saturday was another productive day on Wilsons Farms complete with lots of sunshine! After all the rain we have had in the past week or so, the plants were soaking in the sunshine like no tomorrow. Hubby kept telling me that the plants were growing before our eyes... and how they were bigger in the afternoon from when we first got in the garden that morning.

As you can see there are little squash coming in...



The cilantro is double in height now!



Most of our day was spent working in the garden. Hubby and I both spent a lot of time off and on hand weeding and hoeing the long rows. Again, with all of the rain we had, it is no surprise the amount of weeds we have too!







We also strategically dusted those plants still showing evidence of worms or bugs. We re-applied the deer/varmint prevention liquid to the plotsaver perimeter fence. And we set up our strings for the cucumber plants to "run" up!





Next up was thinning out the corn stalks... we planted 3-5 seeds in each hole back during the planting weekend in early May. They all seem to have made it to corn stalks! So we cut out the smaller ones to make more rooms for the best 1-2...





"BJ" came over to pitch in and he bush-hogged the overgrown lower bottom plot for us... this is where our honey bees are located. The white clover was pretty much dried-up so it was time to cut it.



Later in the day, "BJ" and Hubby did some scraping/leveling of one section of our driveway... This section was pretty eroded from all of the vehicles going over it in the past year.



We also planted more sweet corn... picked up a dollars worth at the local feed store. This will come in a month after our current planting.





All in all, the garden is looking fabulous!