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Garden update
It's been awhile since I blogged. I went on vacation - a week at Lake Fremont with my family - and I had to work like a demon to get stuff done for AAR beforehand. Then when I got home the message boards debuted in their new location, and it's been sort of one headache after another with databases crashing and search functions not working and ad scripts crapping out. Let me just go on record here: I hate host transfers. Transferring data from one site to another is always complicated, and there are always problems. This transfer was necessary, but it was a lot of work before it transferred and a lot of work after too.
Well, that's off my chest. On to the good stuff. Here's the garden at the end of June, specifically June 26th, 2009.
We had a heat wave the week we were gone, which was nice because we were at the lake and it was about 10 degrees cooler there. When I came home, I found that my vegetables (and weeds) had exploded with growth. The rain/heat combo made a dramatic difference. My tomato plants had grown as much as a foot. I ripped out some of my volunteer cilantro and froze the bottom leaves and picked some of the snap peas. Tonight I had some lettuce from this garden. The bunnies got at it and it took awhile to grow back, but I finally got a good head. It was...a bit gritty. But still good. I'll have to do a better job washing it next time. 
My onions are almost ready to thin, which means scallions in the very near future. The small row of carrots that survived look great, as do the potatoes. The zucchini plants are thriving and have put out a couple of flowers as have some of the tomatoes. Three pepper plants survived. They look less robust, but I might get peppers off them still. The beans and basil are coming back fro
m pest attack too. Over at garden #2, the one I'm doing with my dad, I've got a row and a half of carrots, more onions, lots of tomatoes, three good-looking pepper plants, and some great squash. The beans and lettuce got eaten down. You actually can't really tell there was lettuce, it's so badly depleted. But, really, with my CSA bounty, I hardly need any more lettuce. Overall, things are on target right now.
Here is my little container garden. I've got 4 tomato plants (2 shown), a couple of cucumbers, some baby lettuce, and a cabbage. These are all doing really well. I had some trouble with chipmunks - I think - digging in the pots. They destroyed my basil, so I'm now growing in indoors. Once I mulched these veggies with horse manure, though, the critter damage has been minimal.
See those weeds in my patio? They are no longer. You would not believe the weed growth from the water/sun double play. I had so much nightshade growing back in the back of the flower garden. Which would be handy if I wanted to kill someone with an old-fashioned, highly traceable poison. However, since I don't, out it went along with some fake clover and a boatload of crabgrass.
Speaking of invasive stuff, here is my mint patch. This stuff grows like crazy. I didn't plant it, but I have dug it out with a shovel each year of the past 10 years I've lived here. And it always comes back bigger and better than ever. Up until now I've just composted it, but this year I'm trying something different. I'm drying it upside down in my garage as per these instructions. (See photo here.) This is so I can make mint tea this winter and use it for cooking with. I ripped out a lot of it, but this is actually the after photo, so as you can see, I've got loads more.
Max and I picked mulberries off our neighbor's tree. I froze them because berries are very time sensitive. I asked Max if he liked blackberries or mulberries better, and he said blackberries. Curious, I asked why. "Because they taste stronger, Mommy," he said. I thought that was pretty insightful and interesting considering he hasn't tasted a blackberry since last August. But he's right. Blackberries have a stronger flavor to them.
Our first raspberries are also setting nicely. I bought them off Craigslist for $2 a plant and dug them in only a couple of months ago. They are pretty hardy. The dogs have trampled them a bit, but they've stood the test so far. I hope they grow and grow and grow. I love raspberries, and that area of the yard doesn't have to look "sculpted" or anything. Here is a picture of my fledgling fruitmaker. There are also photos of my flowers on Flickr. Almost everything I have this year I raised from seed I gathered free last fall. Which is kind of cool. I'm letting a lot of indigenous wildflowers live in the garden too as they are generally a lot more trample resistant than traditional flowers like lilies or roses. It's kind of a more chaotic look, but I like it.
We are back to cold and rain again for now. I'm hoping that the warmer weather will kick back in because I need it and my garden needs it. So don't pancake on us now, Mother N. We need the sun!