Perhaps an early viewing this week...

For my cucumber plant. It really isn't looking good now, it's losing structure and strength in the stems as well as the (now even worse, totally awful looking) leaves - ho hum, I've not given up yet.

As for everything else, I owe pictures for the weeks progress but everything else seems to be going strong. I've held off from getting more in the spaces right now just so I can see how the cucumber is going to go - if it does end up dying, I'll go get another to replace it and then look at what else is there.

I need to put some thought into building a framed netting around the plot too, as I think this will help in keeping the pesky squirrels out, which were my only real problem last year I think - and it was somewhat minor, but still - it'd be nice to have a bit of extra protection against the critters. Thoughts into that revolve around "How do I get in?" and whether I want to bother building it with enough complexity to have a door and stuff - I don't want to spend much time on it, nor money really so it's a lowkey idea for now.

The weather should certainly give me an indication of whether the cucumber is going to survive, as it's been really nice and sunny - ideal for a nice growth spurt and general plant health. I even gave them essentially a days rest from watering too, in order to see if it sparked anything - really it's too early to do that, as I do starve them when they're producing fruit/veg, as it can promote extra growth (the plant will notice the lack of water and preserve it's fruit by feeding it more, I think is the theory).

Anyways, I will try to take some pics today and get them on here, that was the whole premise of this blog after all ;)

Yay for the summer season weather! :D

Progress so far and what the hell?

Well everything is still as expected, barring the cucumber which seems to be dwindling down a bit more :/ However, I'm hopeful I can get it back in shape soon.

I found out yesterday (I had previously suspected/wondered) that my garden is being watered at another time in the day by another tenant in our house. Probably thinking that he's doing me a favour by watering my plants after his.. Nice gesture, but totally unwelcome, to be honest. I need to know exactly what's going on with my garden in order to serve it's needs, this throws that whole idea out of the water. First of all I don't even know if they're using a nozzle on the hose, which means the poor plants are being battered to hell with high pressure water, as well as they only seem to be watering the plant area yet the entire garden (ie, soil) needs water to upkeep it's growing capability.

This really bothered me last night, I tried to ask the other tenants about it (intending to put a polite stop to it) but I was ignored at the door.. Perhaps tonight. To try and prevent this today, Mother Nature has whipped me up some rain this morning and I've also stowed a portion of my hose away on our deck hoping that it will discourage its use. This also angers me. I don't want to deny anyone using my hose, it's a hose - not a big deal, but this is really the only way right now I can prevent them from watering when I'm not around.

Ho hum, the stresses of vegetable gardening! ;)

We've a possibility of planting some flowers in a few pots too this year, which we may do soon - I'm hoping to look into more vegetables for the empty areas and see what else I can try to grow, etc. Being that this is only the second year that I've done this (read: second time) I'm still very much in the beginner/learning phase basically winging it through sheer luck and a very fundamentally simple understanding of plants (I know they need sun and I know they need water ;-))

However now, work beckons!

Bloggotory

I have to admit, this whole blogging thing is cool - not that I think anyone actually bothers to read this shit, but it's a place to vent so *shrug* ;)

The hose/tap/watering issue was resolved, I spoke to one of the landlords (1 of 3) and this one had the same thoughts as I, so all is well and I watered my wee ones last night (including their daily dose of Miracle-Gro) and this morning - I'm hoping the sun this week will spark some life into them.

Anyway, few things to rant about but I've no time to put them into some sort of semi-coherent form.. maybe later.

Back to work!

Quick rant

Well now all my garden is planted, I've been checking it at night and in the morning to ensure it's getting fed properly, etc. My big beef right now however is with my landlord, and apparently his lack of plumbing knowledge.

We have a few side taps, two at the back of the house (on both sides) and one in the front. My patch of land is at the back, and I used the one functioning back tap all last season, and even earlier this year when prepping the garden (as well as cleaning down baby toys/stuff). Now, the basement apartment apparently had a leak go on in their place, so immediately the landlord expects it's from our apartment (we're above them), yet we've no floods or anything - so they (I guess with some reason) assumed it was the side tap.

Now, this is fine and acceptable, but I checked the tap last night and despite the plastic bag wrapped around it, the pipe is still 'live' - they've not cut off the feed, which makes me wonder: Surely water under pressure would still leak from a pipe regardless of whether the end point of the pipe was sealed or not (or, in this case, the tap was open or closed) - so I've got to call them today and ask what the hell.. I spoke to him Sunday and he said he'd get it done by Monday, which of course didn't appear to happen (I wasn't around enough to keep on at him).

I don't care which tap, I just need to water the damn garden. And if he expects me to use the tap at the front of the house, he can damn well pay for a longer hose too.

Gah..

Annotated pics!

So here are the annotated pictures of my garden, just illustrating what is planted where. I don't recall the specifics of some of the plants, and frankly can't be bothered to go in to the garden and read the tabs.

One is the left side, and the right side - as can be seen by the overlap with the stepping stones I use, etc.

There's a bunch of open space in there, especially on the right side - which is prime direct sunlight real estate, so we'll have to see what else is available in the garden centres (read: Canadian Tire ;-))

It rained overnight, so I'll have to go check up on my babies this morning :-) I'm hoping to see some strength in the stems, etc. now that they've had a night in the proper earth.

oh and as a PS, excuse the water spots on the camera lense, this old camera has seen far better and cleaner days ;-)

It's that time of year again...

Well, I planted the majority of my garden today, hoping for another successful crop as was experienced last year.

I've decided to keep this blog to track progress and document my garden this year, as well as to perhaps serve as a ranting forum :-)

Anyways, here are the photos from todays initial planting, if I can be arsed I'll draw on them later to illustrate which are which.

I've a couple of patches that I can add more to at a later point too, so I'll have to have a think of what else we'd want to grow.

Until I get used to this blog editor, I'll have to keep this formatted a bit crappily... bear with me :)

Thanks to Wzl for the typo point-out ;-)