First summer squash of the season
I’ll have to get up early tomorrow to pick the rest; there are at least 15 more where those came from! I should add, these were from Jessi’s half of the garden 😉
Thursday, August 13, 2026
Recent VEGarden Posts
Vine Borers
They’re Back! This is the adult Vine Borer Moth. She lays her eggs at the base of your summer and winter squash plants, and when the eggs hatch the disgusting maggot-like worms tunnel into the hollow stems, eventually killing the plant.
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
We’ve been getting an average of two inches of rain per week. While all of the herbs are growing well, the catnip has really surprised me. It is currently the tallest plant in our garden – even taller than the sunflowers (though they’ll catch up soon enough!)
$5 Bean Teepee
Unfortunately, we didn’t move the old bean and cucumber trellises with us, and I didn’t have the scrap wood (or the ambition) this year to build something new. Menard’s sells 10′ PVC Pipes for 97¢. Five of those, plus a bit of hemp twine, makes a really nice bean teepee. I dug each pole 1 foot into the ground to make sure the winds wouldn’t take them down this summer.
Plum and Apple Trees
We ordered a Nichols plum tree and Goldrush and Williams Pride apple trees from One Green World. They came in last week, but I forgot to call to get the lines marked beforehand so we had to wait to plant them. They sat in the crawlspace and the plum tree decided to flower. All are semidwarf and disease resistant varieties. Goldrush ripens late and William’s Pride early. We planted them by our crabapple trees in the front yard – hopefully they’ll get enough sun!
Busy Bee
The chives have been flowering for a week. Welcome, bees! The garden looks completely different, and green. I’ll have to post a few photos this weekend … after we do a bit of weeding!
Asparagus and Goumi
I didn’t think the asparagus was going to come up, but all the rain recently must have done it some good. Its planted in the far corner my my garden plot next to the compost and past the strawberries.
Puck Loves Gardening
He also is really good about staying in the garden paths. Here he’s found a small patch of shade from the arbor.
Morels
We found these beautiful fungi growing in our back yard. Mmmm…
Mom’s Garden
For Mother’s Day this year, I gave my mom a row in my garden. Â She planted zucchini, carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, lima beans, beets … and left space for tomatoes and peppers. We’ve had non-stop rain since then, so I’m sure her garden will grow!
My Garden
So I’ve been busy this spring and my garden plot and seedlings aren’t what I pictured before we started this year. But thats ok. You can see the row I’ve had planted for quite a while.
Garden Preparation: Part 2
Two weeks later we finished spreading the compost and tilling the garden. Jessi’s half is on the left; Chris’s half is on the right. Let the games begin!
Garden Preparation: Part 1
One long weekend, sunshine, and several shovels full of dirt turned the giant mounds of compost pictured in my last post into this: We actually expanded the garden a bit this year, so the first step was renting a sod cutter, and removing more grass. Then we spread the compost, amended the dirt with lime, rock phosphate, and green sand … and Chris tilled! This is only half of the garden – there’s still another pile to be dealt with. We got a second arbor, which I put up this weekend along with some sections of the fence. It’s getting there… I’m hoping to find time to dig out the rows in this half (“my garden”) this week and start... Read More
Compost!
Last year, we amended our new, sandy garden with seven pickup truck loads of compost from the Free Compost Site in our county. Since then, the truck was sold for $300 (it was worth nearly every penny, too…), we moaned and groaned about the sand, and had a mediocre garden.
Luffa
One of my projects this year is growing luffa – sponge gourds. These need to be transpotted soon. I’m planning on growing them all in pots on our deck, so they can climb up the railings and hang down.
Here we go again…
Welcome back to VEGarden! The sun is shining and though temperatures are still in the 40s, we have hit some 60º F days – spring is just around the corner! And this means that it’s time to start planning the garden! So, the first task: starting seeds. Chris prepared the soil mix: 3 parts peat, 2 parts compost, 2 parts water, and a handful of cottonseed meal. He sifted the peat through a screen to remove some of the large lumps – this left him with a very nice, smooth soil mix for making blocks.
what’s up
hey this space has been dormant for a while. i’m going though seed catalogs for this years garden. i’ve also been reading gaia’s garden a book on permaculture and rereading the one straw revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka. It’s one of my favorite books which I am too lazy to talk about right now, but hopefully I’ll find time every week or two to put something in this space as we start year 2 of our garden.
Will Update.
So, we moved. Across the state. I’m sorry that it has been so long since I’ve posted here! Pictured above is our new garden, on our new one-acre lot. We have already planted carrots, lettuce, spinach, chard, peas, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and onions. Since we *live* on this property, I am sure this garden will be much more bountiful than the one-acre garden we semi-maintained in 2007. Life gets in the way of things, some times. Hopefully I will have time this spring and summer to post some garden pictures and write a bit. The site needs a major software update and design rehaul; I’ve been busy making websites that pay the bills, so unfortunately this one kind... Read More
The Dead of Winter
Sounds good to me: “I don’t have time to garden well. I garden anyway. Gardening is one of those activities like caring for children or learning about the past that rewards you for every little effort, no matter how small. It’s an infinite game.” You can’t lose or fail is what I’ll keep telling myself.
We have Broccoli!
I never thought I’d see it! We have about a dozen broccoli and cauliflowers forming. As you can see the leaves are getting eaten up. I’ve picked off a good number of cabbage moths. I’ll probably get BT for the kale and turnips and things I’m planning on putting out soon. Last week I watered on account of the lack of rain and I also applied some liquid kelp to the brassicas and tomatoes. I also spread some clover and vetch around the plants hoping they’ll germinate and provide a little nitrogen boost. Still no tomatoes besides a few cherries, but there are lots of fruits we just need a decent rain. Who knows, maybe it’ll rain in august sometime.