Weed 'n Feed

We're very pleased with the progress in this year's garden - after a long cold wet spring, we've finally hit the long hot humid days of summer that make gardening in this part of the world so rewarding. A late start, but we are now optimistic that most of the things we planned on canning or freezing are going to produce fairly abundantly. The tomatoes are making me nervous, but they are working on it.
Our most rewarding experiment so far has been the earlier and thicker mulching. Weeding has been a fraction of what we did last year. And the mulch is successfully holding the moisture in this very sandy loam so that watering is done only weekly - except seedlings in the succession plantings, which I water daily until they are established. So weeding is minimal, and now we're well into the feeding part of the garden! Feeding the family, that is.

Here's a backside view of the strawbale chicken house, with the "pop hole" they exit from. We put the chicken house next to the garden so that in the fall we just switch the fence opening and they spend a couple of happy months scratching through the mulch and garden debris, de-bugging and fertilizing as they go. Nothing is too good for Collin's cluckers - those are happy girls, let me tell you.
Although the photos are kinda small, you can get the general idea. In the background by the white hoops, the slave detail is working on the last picking of strawberries.
The boys always help me lay out the boardwalks before planting, and it's fun to throw in a little whimsy like the triangles, which make nice planting plots for things I want to keep a closer eye on - such as lettuce seedlings, which need to have a good amount of misty watering to sprout and then it's stand back and grab the shears for salad! We doubled the basil, just past the light green lettuce, there is just no such thing as too much basil...

The veggie garden always needs flowers, too, to break up the monotonous green. Marigolds, zinnias, batchelor buttons, cosmos, and of course sunflowers. Although we didn't plant any sunflowers this year. There were about a hundred volunteers - we left some where they were and transplanted others to the sides of the garden.
Broccoli has been on the menu about every third night, a dozen plants are keeping us well-fed.
Beyond the broc the new raspberry rows are getting established, and then there are the peas.

See? Peas! "Green Arrow", for those who need to know such things.
The bush beans were reeeeeeeaallllly slow taking off. Thought we might have to replant. But here they are, on the verge of blossoms. Note the heavy straw mulch. There's a good half a ton of grass clippings there, too, from cutting the extra long grass after the riding mower was down for about six weeks. All the taller green sticking up? Sunflowers. They're taking over...
See? Sunflowers. If you look closely (or click on the photo, it will enlarge), there is a BUG on the tip of one of the petals on the very right, half way down.

I think I mentioned last year, the biggest challenge to a successful Wisconsin garden has been the bugs. I would happily settle for Northwest slugs, at least you can see the nasty buggers before they eat the whole zuchinni. I'm gaining an extended midwest vocabulary - top of the list is a variety of BUG POISONS. I've always gone with organic deterrants, with good success in the Northwest insect skirmishes. But these guys are something else. They sip my old standby "Safers Insecticidal Soap" for breakfast, snack on Rotenone for lunch, and stand up on their hairy hind legs to see what's for dinner (besides the plant they have decimated). It's war, I'm tellin' you.
I did find a good organic spray that has a variety of essential oils that seems effective against a creature I don't even know the name of yet - and the spray is made in Port Orchard, WA, close to my old garden. It figures.


I mentioned the garden slaves. They finished the strawberry picking, after several hours in 90 degree high humidity. Their reward? Getting hosed. In the nicest possible way. COLD water.
Carrie doused herself, then took on the punks - they were begging for it. Poor little slaves.

One hour after this photo, when all the garden work was done for the day - the temperature dropped 20 degrees as a storm front blew in, and by dinner time it was thunder, lightening, and heavy rain. What they call a "doozy" around here.

At least I didn't have to water the garden.