So after my encounters with deer eating my tulips, the allium did fine. They looked like puff balls made of little purple stars, and the deer let them live long and prosper. They are, I believe, in the onion family, so maybe the deer just knew they wouldn't like the taste after my delicate tulips?
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| Gourds, squash, pumpkin? Your guess is as good as mine! |
My husband gave it to me, and then I think he waas disappointed that I didn't fling it open with the passion I would have in the past. "I'm not planting another tulip." I told him.
"Oh sure you are." he encouraged me. "They didn't eat all of our tulips."
And he is right. I calculate that if we plant about 100 more tulips, we might get to enjoy ten surviving tulips. Or the neighborhood deer will just throw bigger dinner parties.
To say our garden this year is saddly underperforming would be to put a better face on it than is actually happening. The heirloom tomatoes that I grew under grow lights, in a hydroponic, nutrient rich water are just pathetic. They are green, and that is about all you can say for them. They are leggy, the leaves are tiny, the stems are puny. It would be a miracle if anything grows on them. The string beans that I started from seed in the same pots are doing much better.
The squash, one plant from a packet of seeds, put out about 5 leaves, a yellow flower, and then stopped growing. It is still green. It still has it's flower. It just isn't growing.
And are you wondering why I am letting clumps of grass grow in my garden? Well first, you know the story, I am not feeling all that well and right now I can't do much gardening, BUT, those
are not clumps of grass growing, but stands of early, dwarf (so the stalks only grow to 5ft high), sweet corn. Yes! Today is the 21st of June and I am supposed to be able to harvest ears of corn from them for our Fourth of July Barbecue. What are the chances, do you think? This is a recent picture, I kid you not. Lest you think that there is something wrong with the seeds or the plants, I got them from Burpees, and they were very highly recommneded. Everyone I talked to had great results with them. Except for moi! I think there is something majorly wrong with our soil, even though my husband has
mixed peat moss into the ground, top soil and a bag of cow manure, not to mention all the Miracle
Grow that constantly lands on it from watering other plants. Someday I would like to take ALL the soil out of there for a few feet down and replace it with manure - horse, cow, chicken - and see if that helps at all!
The bugs this year seemed to have started earlier than usual, and I can't stand on top of
them like I would usually to spray them with vinegar and water, oil etcetera, so they are having a feast as you can see on the picture of my new Blue Moon climbing rose from Burgess. Not exactly blue, but pretty anyway. I feel if it had had someone loving it better, like I would have usually, and may-be added some iron to the soil around it's roots, it would have been bluer. In the meantime, I got some free seeds with one of my orders. One was for "Vine Peaches" and the other was for some type of super tomato with vines that are sturdy and reach to the moon and back. Okay, not that far, but far beyond what the usual tomato would be. I didn't care all that much about them, so I put them together in two hanging baskets, put them down on the sunny steps of my back porch, and mostly forgot about them while I was upset about those dratted heritage tomatoes in the front. Well these plants are doing great! They are green and lush and soon will be climbing onto the bannister of my back stairs. It will be interesting to see what fruit I eventually get out of them.
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And please excuse all the problems I had with formatting today!
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