July 20, 2009

Hi everyone!

Things have been progressing well at the garden, and it looks absolutely beautiful right now. Last week, we started digging the perennials bed and planted a section of it with the strawberries. It looks great, and there's still room for more- twelve plants in total. Our plans are to include two more beds for asparagus and rhubarb, but those need to be planted in the early spring so we have some time before the beds need to be finished. We may dig some temporary herb beds above the terrace as well and establish some perennials there.

In the meantime, I have replanted the recently harvested beds with some new crops- bok choi, spinach, arugula, brussels sprouts, collard greens, and summer squash. I'm looking forward to the latter, as they should be highly productive fairly soon. Brussels sprouts are a good choice for this time of year, as they will produce their least bitter crop towards the fall. We also planted the new trellis with indeterminate sugar snap peas- those'll be good producers for the rest of the year.

With the garden planted for now, we'll be turning our attention to some other things. First off is weed control- we'll be weeding fairly regularly; we've already finished one side of the bean terrace that was almost overgrown. We'll do the same thing in and around the raised beds this week. This will prevent the weeds from seeding our beds any more than they already have. We also need to mulch the squash and tomatoes; this will give the frequently thirsty plants a more constant water supply. We'll also harvest regularly and dig new areas.