The Garden in July (and early August)
Aug. 14th, 2018 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
olorielI have a fat nasty blister in the palm of my right hand (of all stupid places!) so I can't keep on digging. And besides, it's finally a rainy day! Time to sort through the pictures of the past month and, instead of digging in the garden... picspamming about the garden, yay!
Some before/after shots of thecomplete and utter chaos veggie garden at the beginning of July, and at the beginning of August, after a month of drought. (Note that our region at least had a very fine spring; others are less lucky...)
It's not supposed to look like that! The beans in particular are a shocker. I specifically chose a type of runner bean that "brings good yield even in wet summers" because summers in our region are typically wet. Of course, they didn't like this summer at all. That's what I get for making rational decisions when buying seeds! Usually I'm like "eee these beans are called Vermont Yellow Eye! like Vermont wheredawn_felagund lives! we can be sisters in beans!" or "lol these chickpeas are called Tulliola? MUST HAVE" and to be honest, neither of these irrational choices have disappointed me so far.
But let's focus on the postives and have some nice pics instead. Most of them were taken in early to mid-July, before it got so bad)...
There's a path between four veggie patches hidden somewhere here :P
Whatever happened to my cute tiny fig shrub?
Radishes look WILD when they go to seed.
Two sides of the perennial hill. Yup, I'm still proud of what we've done with that slope and I'm proud of the little apple trellis too. The one thing we don't currently have is room for an orchard, and last year I decided to stop moaning about it and instead planted a whole row of apple trees into a trellis on Reformation Day. Look, one of them is already bearing fruit!
Oh, right... due to the heat, several trees in the forest more or less exploded (well that's what it sounds and looks like) and one of them, a ~250 year old oak, fell onto our paddock, so it became ours. Took us three weeks (and Jörg went through three rented chainsaws until he finally found a company that had heavy duty chainsaws! Oaks are brutal, although it wasn't as bad as the year where we got a frickin lime tree. The vikings used lime wood for their shields because its funky growth structure makes it very hard to split, so you can imagine the fun we had trying to get a whole damn tree into burnable chunks!) to get it all cut up, but now we should have enough firewood for... well, the winter after next probably, since it's still relatively fresh wood. -- Anyway, the kids loved climbing on the cut-upped discs and wanted to keep some of them. They call it their Baumwipfelpfad (after a tree-themed infotainment park we visited earlier in the year) and jump from one disc to the next. The set-up reminds me of those wooden pillars that the shaolin monks use to practice their surefootedness....
OK I'm also kind of proud of this. It's actually just another waste slope between our terrace and the mother-in-law's lawn and a few years ago, a blogging friend and I joked about turning it into a fairy-themed garden. I never got further than a few elements because soon, other things were more important, but nonetheless it does have a fairy-ish feel to it. Woot!
This, meanwhile, is the wood behind the paddock, which has a fairy-ish feel all by itself.
Some cute critters.
The magnificent greenhouse! Early July vs. early August.
Sadly, I haven't been able to use the tomatoes for anything because Julian always eats them as soon as he finds a ripe one. The funny thing is that he hates tomatoes when we buy them. But if they grow on our plants (or my mom's), he'll eat them all!
Phallic eggplant vs. eggy eggplant
Bell peppers! And baby cucumbers! I'll be able to make my own gherkins! :D
To be fair, the temperatures this year would've sufficed to grow tomatoes etc. without a greenhouse - but the plants don't dry out so quickly in there, so it was probably a good investment nonetheless!
Some before/after shots of the
It's not supposed to look like that! The beans in particular are a shocker. I specifically chose a type of runner bean that "brings good yield even in wet summers" because summers in our region are typically wet. Of course, they didn't like this summer at all. That's what I get for making rational decisions when buying seeds! Usually I'm like "eee these beans are called Vermont Yellow Eye! like Vermont where
dawn_felagund lives! we can be sisters in beans!" or "lol these chickpeas are called Tulliola? MUST HAVE" and to be honest, neither of these irrational choices have disappointed me so far.But let's focus on the postives and have some nice pics instead. Most of them were taken in early to mid-July, before it got so bad)...
There's a path between four veggie patches hidden somewhere here :P
Whatever happened to my cute tiny fig shrub?
Radishes look WILD when they go to seed.
Two sides of the perennial hill. Yup, I'm still proud of what we've done with that slope and I'm proud of the little apple trellis too. The one thing we don't currently have is room for an orchard, and last year I decided to stop moaning about it and instead planted a whole row of apple trees into a trellis on Reformation Day. Look, one of them is already bearing fruit!
Oh, right... due to the heat, several trees in the forest more or less exploded (well that's what it sounds and looks like) and one of them, a ~250 year old oak, fell onto our paddock, so it became ours. Took us three weeks (and Jörg went through three rented chainsaws until he finally found a company that had heavy duty chainsaws! Oaks are brutal, although it wasn't as bad as the year where we got a frickin lime tree. The vikings used lime wood for their shields because its funky growth structure makes it very hard to split, so you can imagine the fun we had trying to get a whole damn tree into burnable chunks!) to get it all cut up, but now we should have enough firewood for... well, the winter after next probably, since it's still relatively fresh wood. -- Anyway, the kids loved climbing on the cut-upped discs and wanted to keep some of them. They call it their Baumwipfelpfad (after a tree-themed infotainment park we visited earlier in the year) and jump from one disc to the next. The set-up reminds me of those wooden pillars that the shaolin monks use to practice their surefootedness....
OK I'm also kind of proud of this. It's actually just another waste slope between our terrace and the mother-in-law's lawn and a few years ago, a blogging friend and I joked about turning it into a fairy-themed garden. I never got further than a few elements because soon, other things were more important, but nonetheless it does have a fairy-ish feel to it. Woot!
This, meanwhile, is the wood behind the paddock, which has a fairy-ish feel all by itself.
Some cute critters.
The magnificent greenhouse! Early July vs. early August.
Sadly, I haven't been able to use the tomatoes for anything because Julian always eats them as soon as he finds a ripe one. The funny thing is that he hates tomatoes when we buy them. But if they grow on our plants (or my mom's), he'll eat them all!
Phallic eggplant vs. eggy eggplant
Bell peppers! And baby cucumbers! I'll be able to make my own gherkins! :D
To be fair, the temperatures this year would've sufficed to grow tomatoes etc. without a greenhouse - but the plants don't dry out so quickly in there, so it was probably a good investment nonetheless!
no subject
Date: 2018-08-14 06:35 pm (UTC)Sorry the garden's suffered, but the "positives" do look good!
no subject
Date: 2018-08-14 08:18 pm (UTC)It could be worse, of course - the beans can't be saved, but plenty of other things didn't shrivel up until they were ripe. Some farmers - mostly those who grow maize - are pretty hard up though.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-14 07:08 pm (UTC)I wish I could you send you some of our rain, too. Though your bell peppers are doing better than mine this year; we've had a grand total of two.
I have to ask: why are there painted upside-down pots on stakes in the second picture under the cut?
no subject
Date: 2018-08-14 08:13 pm (UTC)Upside-down pots stuffed with straw, wood wool, pieces of bark etc. are a common way of biological pest control. The idea is that you're offering hiding/breeding places to insects like earwigs, green lacewings or ladybugs, who eat lice and other pests. You either put the pots on stakes or hang them from branches. Felix saw painted ones during a gardening show we visited in May, and naturally he wanted to make his own! They don't have to be painted though (presumably, the insects don't care either way). Thanks for asking! :D
no subject
Date: 2018-08-14 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-15 09:05 am (UTC)So yeah, we probably don't strictly need to put up nesting places for insects, as there are plenty of dead trees and patches of uncut grass etc. all around - but on the other hand, it doesn't hurt, either. (At least I can lecture people about biological pest control when they ask! ;)) If nothing else, they're decorative. *g*
Yay!
Date: 2018-08-15 07:36 am (UTC)Re: Yay!
Date: 2018-08-15 09:08 am (UTC)Wow, that sounds spectacular! Perhaps the "cups" turned out to be life-savers this year?
Re: Yay!
Date: 2018-08-15 10:03 am (UTC)Re: Yay!
Date: 2018-08-15 10:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-15 10:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-15 03:03 pm (UTC)Your poor tomato plants! :(
no subject
Date: 2018-08-15 05:24 pm (UTC)Your photos are wonderful, what a lovely garden!
no subject
Date: 2018-08-16 11:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-20 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-22 09:07 am (UTC)Trees are always so generous, aren't they? Whether they give you wood for building or making furniture or firewood, whether you turn them into musical instruments or paper, or whether they simply become a breeding ground for mushrooms and bugs and wild bees, they always keep on giving.
Our Baumwipfelpfad is harmless in that way. My great-grandfather (who was a major Goethe fanboy) brought a dead cherry tree to a cabinet maker who used it to make a set of chairs based on Goethe's dining room chair design. I often think of that when people act like fannish obsessions are a totally new phenomenon...