The Betty and Boo Chronicles: Weekend Cooking: Vegetable ...

It's been awhile since I did a garden update post and a Weekend Cooking post, so I thought I'd combine the two.

(Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads and is?open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. For more information, see the welcome post.)

May was an incredibly busy month work-wise, so I wasn't as attentive to the garden as I should have been, and it shows with all the weeds in the pea patch and the fact that the asparagus bed has turned into the asparagus forest. (It's gone to all fern and the season isn't even over yet. My bad.)

I've already decided that if this is going to remain a vegetable garden, next year I'm converting everything except for the asparagus into all raised beds and using the Square Foot Gardening system. ?I can already tell I'm wasting a lot of space in my haphazard approach.

But, right now, my goal is to produce something edible from my efforts. Anything. Just one thing will do. 'Cause right now, I'm kind of feeling overwhelmed ... and the season has barely started.

Here's where we're at:

Peas:

We got a late start on the peas, having planted these on April 30. ?(We moved into this house on April 2.)

Blueberries:
We inherited five blueberry bushes in the backyard when we purchased this house. I have no idea how to take care of blueberry bushes and I haven't done anything to them. I only just discovered that there were berries last weekend.

And now they are starting to turn color! ?I think they are going to be gorgeous. At least, I hope so. I was worried about these with some of our late frosts.





Cucumbers:
I just planted this bed this evening. This is a starter plant (Bonnie's); the rest are High Mowing Organic Seeds Marketmore 76 Cucumbers.
Herb Garden:
(You can see the blueberry bushes in the background of this photo below.)

I decided to do my herb garden in containers, and I set my herb garden pots on the edge of the patio. I may move them. We have parsley, cilantro, sweet basil, two kinds of oregano, and cat grass. (The latter is Betty's choice.) All of these are from Burpee's Fordhook Collection.

Tomatoes:
Along with the containers above, I have two pots of Burpee's Super Sweet 100 Hybrid Tomatoes, which look like cherry tomatoes. If I need to transplant them to something larger, I will. In addition, we have several plants that I've started from seed.

I'm excited to see how our tomatoes do. Of all the crops, they're the ones I feel the most invested in. I guess because I've "raised them" from seed. I guess that's always the case. I haven't really done this the normal way. We started the seeds indoors on April 29 and saw our first sprout on May 5. I started keeping them on our covered deck at that point.

These are how they looked on May 13.?I think my choice of potting soil made a tremendous difference with these. I used Miracle Gro Garden Soil for Flowers and Vegetables for these six and regular potting soil for the rest. These six tomato plants have been doing well all through May. The others have been lagging behind and some won't make it at all.??

I started bringing them outside a week or so before Memorial Day. Here are the fabulous six, on May 27. It was really hot last weekend, so I didn't have a chance to transplant them. I also wanted to give them another week, to see how they would do.?

We have a window box on the landing of our deck, and I realized that this would be a perfect place for the transplants. They all fit perfectly in the box, even the struggling ones, so that's where they've been for the past week or so.?

May 29

May 29

June 2 ? (I'm still not sure if the taller ones are ready for transplanting.)?

We're having a spectacular weekend weatherwise here in Pittsburgh, so tomorrow I'm hoping to get the string beans and zucchini in, as well as a few strawberry plants that I just purchased today. ?We'll see.?

Are you growing a vegetable garden this year? ?I'd love to see pictures if you are.?

copyright 2012, Melissa, The Betty and Boo Chronicles If you are reading this on a blog or website other than The Betty and Boo Chronicles or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

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