One of my 3 Naranjilla plants about to flower.

Over the last week I've had to reinforce my mono filament 'fence' at one point where they broke in. Very little damage thanks to multiple layers of line.

A wise, old hillbilly farmer solved the mystery of my slow growing plants this year and the reason my peas failed and my peanuts are about to fail--wet feet. I have heavy, poorly drained soil and this years heavy downpours in April and May drowned my plants. It's nice to see some plants do well with wet feet and some that thrive-- Cherokee Popcorn. I love my Cherokee Popcorn; this year's crop is from saved seeds; thank goodness as Baker Creek no longer offers it. I stopped growing corn a few years ago as it takes both space and time. I sure am glad I tried Cherokee popcorn last year. It set a nice crop in a small space and grew with minimal attention.

I have yet to see a Honeybee but I saw my first Bumblebee.

I've put out the following plants:

Tomatoes: Chocolate Cherry,Cherry Lollipop, Yellow Gooseberry, Matt's Wild Cherry, Black Cherry, and Yellow Peach.

Peppers: Feher Ozam Paprika, Hot Banana.

Amaranth: Hopi Red Dye, Vietnamese Red, and Mayo de Montana.

I also put out the following seeds.

Watermelons: Petit Yellow, Thai Rom Doa, Melitpolski, Chatchai, Gold Baby, Takii Gem, Golden Midget.

Muskmelons: Banana, Minnesota Midget.

Grain: Popping Sorghum, Boom Corn.

Squash: Sweet Dumpling.

Peanuts: Carwile's.

Sweet Potato: several slips from a grocery store sweet tater.

Beans: King of the Garden Lima, Yard long bean, Mississippi Silver Cowpeas.

June 14

Problems!

I thought for a while that slow growth this year was because of a cool spring but with hot weather here and still slow growth I had one of those Duh! moments. I more than doubled the size of my garden but kept to the same amount of Golden fertilizer (1 part urine:15 parts rain water).
I've tripled the application rate and the plants are starting to grow more normally.

Then there are the giant rodents, errr I mean deer. I ringed my garden with 20# test mono filament line at 2 ' high in March. It worked until a few days ago when they broke thru and did some major damage. I put up a double ring of 50# test and hope that cures my deer problem.

I tasted a berry from my adopted wild dewberry--delicious! A keeper. I'm also getting a lot of blueberries from the low bush BB plants I left in my garden. The Juneberries (Saskatoon, Service berry) growing on the edge of the garden are also quite tasty.

Over the last week I've put out:

Plants: Bunch onions from the grocery store, 3 amaranths, Toothache Plant, Cayenne pepper, ground cheries, nasturtiums, Hot Banana pepper, tithonia. Kellogg's Breakfast tomato, and 4 sweet potato slips.

Seeds: black eye peas, King of the Garden lima, Pink Eye purple hulls, yard long beans, Red Ripper peas, Anasazi beans, black beans (from grocery store), Texas Hill Country Okra, and Blacktail Mt., Golden Midget, White Sugar Lump, Cream of Saskatchewan watermelons.