Interesting

I stumbled upon a very useful website today while looking up nutrition facts on a cucumber that I was munching on. The site, Nutrition and You .com, lets you look up almost every fruit and vegetable that you might be growing in your garden and gives you a rundown on the origin of the plant, its health benefits, a nutrition fact label, and cooking suggestions.  Did you know that raw cucumber has an established role in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease patients by limiting neuronal damage in their brain because of its high vitamin K content?  

Also, the summer squash (around the sunflower ring) and lettuce (in the tomato box) are coming in like wildfire and and needs to be harvested almost daily... so wander on up and pick you some!

Progress

The rain threatened all day, but it never ended up coming, and this provided us a perfect day for transplanting more veggies.  We put out about 25 new tomatoes into a patch we had tilled about a week ago.  Most of these tomatoes were clones that we had cut off our main plants and were now ready to go into the ground.  We had some very high quality mulch donated earlier today and it was put straight to good use protecting these new seedlings once in the ground.  They all got a lot of care going into the ground so I think they will all go to fruit at some point and we will have our fall crop tomatoes no problem.  Along with these tomatoes we planted a few more basil plants that had been hanging around waiting for a home, and one lone oregano plant.  I was very pleased with the clones that we had procured, they all had healthy roots and looked extremely healthy.  We worked pretty hard to make sure of this by keeping them watered and keeping them in partial shade during the afternoon hours. 

There are not too many seedlings left that need to get into the ground.  The goal is to get rid of all of the rest and consolidate the leftover dirt from dead plants in the next few days.  Its getting pretty late in the season for planting from early transplants anymore and we have done a descent job overall of getting things into the ground overall.  I know next year will be even more productive because we have had plenty of mistakes to learn from this year about seed starting and transplanting.  This is not bad thing at all, its all just part a giant learning experience / process that is ever evolving.  But, we still have the fall harvest season to look forward too which means it is time to plant more carrots, more lettuce and possibly more basil to bring indoors for the winter.  I want to plant even more basil next year for one main reason:  pesto.  

We  had plenty of visitors to the garden today which is always a welcome sight.  The more the better, exchanging ideas, picking veggies and enjoying the summer weather!  I hope to one day have a shade structure of some sort built up there for everyone to enjoy....along with an apple orchard / walnut trees for shade and more edibles. The place has so much potential it is unreal, I can't wait for the future. 

Milpa

We emptied quite a few packets of seeds up at the garden today.  Among the seeds we planted today were:  bird's nest gourds, KY wonder beans, scarlet runner beans, calypso beans, dragon's tongue beans, diva cucumbers, Cherokee trail of tears beans, golden wax beans, roam II green beans, yellow squash, and a couple of watermelons.  Most of these will be ready in 60-70 days, which puts the harvest dates right around the end of August and through September.  Everything was planted along with the corn to keep the three sister's method going strong.  I cannot wait to see how all of this comes up and how many pounds of produce we will actually will end up with.  The weather has been quite favorable and the plants are loving every second of it.

Outdoor planting is going to come to a screeching near halt here in a week or two....possibly three (with exception to planting leafy greens, carrots, fall crops) ... with the amount of frost free days declining more every day (I know it is only almost officially summer but that fall frost will come eventually!).  But this does not mean we do not have a big and beautiful harvest to look forward to in the coming months before summer is over.  The sunflowers seems to grow more and more every day - some varieties will reach over ten feet before they are though!  The lettuce is just waiting to be harvested by anyone who comes up with some scissors and a bowl.  There is lettuce in three separate beds all waiting to be eaten by anyone.  I have so much lettuce in my own garden that this lettuce will just end up going to compost if not eaten soon!

The weather forecast is great for the next week or so and the agenda has been roughly set as to what needs to be done next.  If anyone feels the need to get outdoors we could always use the help - everyone is always welcome and there is always something to do!

I would like to thank all of the people involved in this project. Unfortunately I will no longer be a part of the gardening club. My schedule has gotten to be to much and feel that I can turn it over to the others and it will be in good hands. This has been discussed in the past and we have worked towards this point. It's not that I'm gonna disappear but all questions and comments can now be given to Brian or Nathan. Thank you for everything once again and I hope that the garden prospers vibatiously.

Update

The three sister's method of gardening was put into practice in the garden yesterday.  This method involves the inter-cropping of corn, beans, and squash variety plants.  This method first originated in the Native American culture and has been applied in gardens around the globe since its discovery.    The corn is about knee high now, so it was time to plant the beans and the squash.  The beans end up using the stalks of corn for support and to vine around.  At the same time as they are climbing the stalk, they are injecting nitrogen back into the soil.  Beans are the perfect companion plant for corn, since the corn is sucking the nitrogen straight out of the soil, the beans can put it right back!  The squash or cucumbers or any type of plant like that, will create a ground cover holding more moisture in and keeping more bugs and weeds out.  We are not done with the whole corn field, but the process is in the works. 

Photos!

Please check out the photo page to see some new pics of the garden's progress!

.....and it looks like it is going to rain again finally in about two hours!