Saturday, October 18, 2008

Gardening 2008

Consistent with most of my other endeavors in life, I now have a bunch of posts started, but unfinished. I think I see a pattern emerging that isn't entirely positive. You may wonder what took me so long to see something everyone else has seen for years. Moving right along . . . .

What we have here are pictures of our garden that turned out so well this year; probably because it is just the first year in the new spot, but hopefully because of all of the good compost from the dump, and the extra attention we gave it.

As you can see, the corn did really well - the white/yellow corn mix anyhow. The corn in the little square foot garden never did anything but look sick. The watermelon plant to the left of the corn only put out 3 melons, one of which is shown below as it appear briefly before disappearing inside of 4 hungry people in an apartment in Boise. That one was the best melons I have ever tasted, and weighed in at around 40 pounds. The other 2 were nothing special.
Here's a shot showing the peas we planted in July - that did very well, thank you. The second batch of corn is just coming up to the left of the peas. The raspberries on the right kind of petered out and finally died altogether. I think it is time to plant something else there - maybe strawberries. In the right rear of the photo is the zucchini plant that did so well.
This is a shot of the square foot garden before it was eaten alive by the tomato plants. The last we saw of them the peppers were doing reasonably well. The carrots also did very well, but for some reason every carrot I have ever raised is bitter. Doesn't matter the type of carrot or the brand of seeds, or the size when harvested. Always bitter . . . . but I'm not.
Here is another shot of the watermelon plant that produced the great big, sweet, delicious in every way watermelon. There's not much of it here, but it eventually got pretty large. As opposed to the corn in the background that was pretty sickly all summer, then died altogether.

Here are just a couple of the carrots that look so good, but taste so bad.
Here is a shot of that really great watermelon.
These are the beans - pole beans on the right, bush beans on the left. They are another success story. These plants produced plentifully and the beans were good eatin. As you can see, however, nothing planted in that spot in the foreground came up. Joanne tried and tried different things, but to no avail. Nothing even broke the surface. I think it is the cats that invade our yard. Any ideas for curtailing their trips to our garden?
Here is a more recent photo of the corn stalks and the square foot garden. This was taken at when it looked best. It was never this good looking again. I was going to take pictures of the garden in its current state to show the contrast (i.e., dead corn stalks and the tomato plants that ate Tierra Buena), but I didn't get it done. Maybe tomorrow I'll do it if it is still light when I get home from work (& I remember). By the way, if you read this mom, the turtle crawled off to another spot while Uncle Wes was here.

G'bye folks.

We love quakies

This has been a wild and crazy week, and what else is new? Joanne is back in UT visiting Aunt Sharon & "Auntie Em" and doing Ottley family business and having fun. I am studying for the Technician Class Amateur Radio License, which test I hope to pass on November 1 so I can qualify for a radio for my birthday or Christmas or something. As you know, we love quakies, so feeling kind of "Utahy", I thought I'd post some pictures I have run across on the internet for your viewing pleasure.








Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Summer Fun?


Dad had to replace the water pipe that runs from the street to the house. He had patched it a few times hoping it would hold but finally decided to just replace the whole thing.

He got the pipe all dug up and mostly replaced and then James came for a visit and got to have some good bonding time with his Dad. We really appreciated his help. Now the job is done and hopefully won't have to be replaced again.