Garden Update 7-5-09

I took a few days off from the computer so the garden update is happening today instead of last Thursday. A few weeks ago, I blogged about how the lack of rain and the extreme heat were killing my poor plants. Moving them into the shade of a large tree on the property has helped tremendously. I was so discouraged when everything was dying, but now things are starting to grow again.

One of the new blueberry plants we bought at the farmer's market 3 weeks ago lost all of its leaves, but I transplanted it into a larger container and continued to water it anyway (thanks in large part to the encouragement of my online gardening friends). When I watered it today, I noticed new leaves beginning to grow! Yay!

The cherry and yellow pear tomatoes continue to produce yummy little tomatoes that we enjoy at least a few times a week. The Black Krim tomatoes I planted from seed several weeks ago are still small seedlings, not really doing much. I think it is probably just too hot for the plants to grow. I'm going to continue watering and dressing with compost and hope for the best.

The watermelon my oldest planted finally just died. Poor plant. It just didn't stand a chance between the heat and the poor soil in the landscaping bed we put it in at first. We put new seeds in the pot with some additional compost, and we'll see what happens. I'm not expecting anything, just experimenting.

One of the sunflower seeds finally germinated and is growing. Hopefully a few more will germinate. Sunflowers are so beautiful.

Over the weekend, we visited back home and my Dad sent me home with a large flower pot full of compost. After using about half on the plants, we discovered that he also shared some worms with us. We were THRILLED since we have wanted for a while now to start our own "worm farm" type compost bin. Our landlord does not want us to compost in open bins as there are woods behind the house and lots of raccoons and other animals that like to go through trash and such. We knew that if we composted in a closed container, we would need some worms, and now we have lots of them! Yay! So, one of our first projects for this week will be to obtain a tightly closing container for composting and lots of "material" to get it started. We have been reading about composting and learned that we can compost yard waste, kitchen veggie and fruit peelings and other waste, cardboard and even some paper. The boys were excited to learn that and are eager to find out if we can reduce the number of bags of garbage we throw out each week. I'm curious, too. I'm sure we'll post pictures at some point.