This is When it Starts to Feel Like WORK!

At the point it turns warm enough to plant beans the garden starts to feel like work.

Yesterday I planted:
1) the tall okra, in the bed under under the willow tree,
2) carrots, in the 4 x 4
3) radishes 4 x 4
4) onions 4 x 4

I made a bamboo cane and deer fence "tipi" for the cantaloupe, zucchini and crookneck squash. The plastic mesh will come off once the plants are large enough to hold their own against whatever is eating my watermelons and sampling the bok choi at night.

At midnight I heard "munch munch munch". We have a large window right over the bed and the tiered garden sits under that window, so whatever was munching was not two feet away, which is why I could hear it so well.

I waited until I couldn't stand it a minute more, then got up, got the flashlight, turned on the deck light and something brown and furry that could leap like crazy jumped from the tiered garden to the corner of our neighbour's fifth wheel. I caught only a glimpse of a rapidly retreating rear-end. I think it must be a bunny. The teeth marks on the bok choi look like bunny teeth.

Anyway I turned the trouble light on back there and there were no more midnight snackers in my garden. Of course it ate the last shreds of the one-leaved watermelon plant. I definitely will have to cage the new watermelon plants. I think I have just the thing for the job. Measuring will be done shortly.

Anyway, I had my beans, peas and short okra soaking overnight and have been planting them a bit at a time. The purple podded soup peas went into the big pot in the community garden. I put the cage around the pot and topped it with wire. It will be quail and bunny safe.

The scarlet runner beans went in the front, strictly for the beauty of the vines. The Chinese painted ladies went into large pots beside the big tomato SIPs on the top tier. They can crawl up the trellising on the back of the trailer and give us some shade while they make beans.

In big pots on tier two I planted burgundy bush beans. I decided to rip the scrawny Chinese kale and perpetual spinach out of the large pot on tier one and plant beans in it instead. I've been puzzled as to why those plants have done so poorly. Well, mystery solved. The pot was full of the fresh compost I took out of the basket this spring. It was way too powerful for plants. I emptied the pot and replaced half of the compost with topsoil. That may still be too rich, but we will see. I will have giagantic bush beans or sad little over fed weaklings.

I keep having to stop and rest, which is annoying. I still have okra to plant. That will go into my 4 x 4. Two rows I think. I should probably have planted more okra and fewer beans. I can buy beans but okra is hard to find!

The 4 x 4 looks good. The tomatoes are growing well. The other things I planted won't be up for a while, and the okra will take two weeks to emerge. So it will look empty for a while yet.

I console myself from slow-growing veggies by looking at my flowers, which are growing and blooming like crazy. I can't decide which to show you, so I've put one or two here and added the rest to my Flickr set, which is in the column to the right. I haven't quite got Flickr figured out yet, so for some reason today's pictures aren't showing up as a separate set, but they are at the end of the mushroom set.