Update on the garden

I have a nice long list of partially finished posts that I plan to publish any day now.  Until then, a photo update on the garden will have to do.

What is growing:

Note the grape flowers!

There is lots of progressing the garden.  The grape vine I planted years ago is finally starting to take over our deck railing.  Until now we've had very few grapes because our dog "helpfully" pruned the grape every year by chewing it back to a nubbin.  This year it was left alone (although Darwyn did chew it somewhat) and as a reward it is littered with grape blossoms.  They aren't much to look at, but I am anticipating lots of grapes!

I finally planted onions, peas and spinach (which are all up) and a bunch of seedlings (tomatoes, basil, cucumber).  The strawberries are littered with baby strawberries (all green) which the kids are itching to pick.  And the herb garden is starting to look more green and less like dirt.

New peas

New onions

The herb bed

Projects:

Awesome sand path

- I finally finished the sand path.  It looks awesome, but the newspaper instead of landscape fabric under the sand isn't working very well.  It did all right against the grass, but the burr plants and dandelions easily pass through it.  Fortunately it isn't too hard to weed those ones out.  I think I might have laid the newspaper down too thin....it might still have worked if I was a little more generous with the paper.

- I also threw together a poorly constructed pea bed as an experiment (you can see it sans dirt at the bottom of the photo).  The area is pretty shady for growing vegetables, but I have read that peas will tolerate a bit more shade than most other things.  If they do well in this spot then I will construct a more solid bed there next year.

Pathetic cucumber trellis

- I need to build some better trellises for these cucumbers.  So far I have found these generic tomato cages to be useless for supporting anything except maybe peas.  Any good suggestions for easy trellises?

- Gus has embarked on an ambitious project to cover our back deck with a roof.  The hope is to make the deck use able in all summer weather so that it can support an outdoor kitchen.  This project is so exciting that it is worthy of its own post.  Hopefully I will get to that soon.  For now, you can just take note of the ominous beam towering 16 feet above the garden!

New deck roof

Setbacks:

Infected rhubarb

So far setbacks have been few, although it is still a little early for my plants to start succumbing to disease.  The only plant showing signs of illness is the rhubarb.  I'm told rhubarb is easy to grow.  It is as hardy as a weed (my favorite type) and will tolerate partial shade (excellent for my garden).  It come up on its own and requires little maintenance.  Unfortunately, mine gets sick every year in June and is all dead by July.  Trust me to kill the rhubarb : (  After some time online I think I've determined that it is being killed by a fungus that kills the leaves and stems and also attacks the root.  Apparently the treatment is to remove all of the infected material as soon as it shows any sign of illness, and then hope that it doesn't come back next year.  In the past I have found hoping is largely ineffective.  Also, this means the lovely rhubarb in my herb garden picture likely won't make it until July.  If any of you gardening experts have better advice, let me know.

Harvest:
Harvest is still meager, but we have used some herbs (and quite a few chives), made some fresh teas, eaten a salad with the first harvest of lettuce and enjoyed a rhubarb pie.  It won't be too much longer before I add strawberries to the list!  I can't wait.  Gardening is definitely an exercise in patience.