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.