July 31

The best two words to describe the garden this year are weeds and water. As you can see in the pictures I have both. It was raining when I took these pictures today, July 31st. We had a major rain storm on the 26th that left the lower end of the garden a small lake and knocked over the first planting of corn. The corn has mostly recovered.

All of the rain this year has given the weeds plenty of water and is defeating the drip system. It also seems to rain on the days that I am home and prevents me from keeping up on the weeds.

It looks as if everything is about 4 weeks behind even though we planted about the same time as last year give a day or two. I didn't plant the third planting of corn due to rain and probably will not plant any more this year. It is getting to late for it to mature.

The pumpkins are doing about as good as anything and do not seem to be effected by the cool spring and all of the rain. The watermelons on the other hand are not going to make it this year.

The tomatoes are dying off one by one due to wilt and the peppers don't seem to know what they are going to do. They are just sitting in a form of limbo and not growing any more.

We had new potatoes for diner today. I dug a few hills in the rain due to curiosity and I wanted some to eat. The last pictures show the Yukon Golds that I dug. These are about the size of the ones I dug last year on July 4th.

July 17

It looks like a garden now. Nothing new planted this last week.

The pumpkins are taking off, but the melons have taken their time sprouting. Not sure if we will get any watermelons this year.

The second planting of corn is all up and doing well. I over planted due to the fact that the seeds were 2008. All of the seeds seem to have come up so I will need to thin them out. I let them grow to about 18" and then pull them up to feed to the goats instead of cutting them down when they are small.

We have been picking peas. Most of them get eaten in the garden by the children. My 7 year old will spend an hour going along eating peas. I planted them for that reason and the vines will end up feeding the goats. Peas are just to time consuming to freeze. I will plant some more in a week or two.

The potatoes are covered with blossoms. I dug up a hill today but the new potatoes are only about a 1/2" at this time.

The pole beans are starting up the trellis. They are a lot more labor intensive. We will see if they out produce the bush beans. Both are Blue Lake.

July 10

As you can see in the pictures the garden is starting to look like a garden. This post has more pictures than normal. The plants seem to be behind due to cooler weather.

The rain has continued and is causing a problem. In addition to preventing work in the garden it defeats the drip system and allows the weeds to make continual comeback.

I was able to get the second planting of corn in on the 5th. Seven rows.

Yesterday we got the trellis up for the pole beans and not a day to soon. This is the first year that we have planted pole beans in the mega garden due to requests to do so from friends and family. It will be interesting to see if they out produce the bush beans. It is much easier to pick the pole beans. I drove tee posts in the ground every 9 feet or so. On the top of the tee posts and about 8 inches from the ground I strung a two wire cables horizontally. Jute twine was strung up and down between the two cables. A knot was tied at both the top and bottom cable with the twine spanning about 36 inches between the two cables. The string was continues. It took 4 rolls of 200 foot twine (800' total) to span the 75 foot row.
New corn

This is Field Vine Weed. It is imposable to get rid of. The best that you can hope to do is control it. Both sheep and goats love it. Some claim that he sheep herders brought it to Utah as a feed for their sheep.

I thinned both the beets and the carrots yesterday.

You can see the bean trellis in this and the next picture.

July 4

I am posting these on July 10th but the photos are from the 4th.

We have had unusual weather this year. It seems to rain on all of my days off. As a result things are behind including the growth of the garden. I was able to finally get the potatoes hilled up on Saturday July 2nd. The "field vine weed" (locals call this morning glory, but it is not the true morning glory) was thick and it took me several passes with the tiller to get through it and the potatoes hilled.