today, aaron and i spent the day fertilizing the gardens as planned. the veg gardens got a dose of magnesium sulphate as well as the fish emulsion and the slow release organic stuff. everything else just got the fish guts and slow release solid organics. we also bought a 3lb bag of the espoma fertilizer at highland garden center for $5.

July 5th, i stopped up after 5:30pm and aaron was still at the house! he watered both veg gardens and the butterfly garden for well over an hour. its gotten so dry out there, the lawns on campus are turning brown.
we weeded by hand the strawberry patch -- again. very diligent attention.
i checked the area near the shed under the black plastic -- i thought the weeds would be much more dead by now. the plastic has had to be there for over two weeks. i'll leave on there another week or so.
have to fertilize soon. hopefully saturday. i think we're almost out of the martha stewart organic fertilizer. i'll pick up some espoma brand organic. still haven't found the fish emulsion -- may need to buy more of that as well.
over all though, i was saying this to aaron earlier -- i am really satisified with the garden this year. the weeds are under control, and the size of our patch - a small 16 x 16 feet, is comfortable for us. we have had much bigger gardens in the past and it was too much work for two part-time unpaid volunteers.

oh, and just some more things before i go to sleep -
some articles on the causes of cracking on tomatoes:
http://williamson-tx.tamu.edu/nrelease/Newsrelease2002/commonlyaskedgardenquestionstomatoesandsquash.htm
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/greenhouse_veg/topics/waterfert_pages/cracking.html
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/greenhouse_veg/ topics/waterfert_pages/russet.html

nothing to note about the garden for me. however, this blogger thing is educating me all about html code i was to lazy to learn thanks to Dreamweaver. In any case, i switched to another template -- although not so exciting to look at color scheme wise, its basic format looks good to me. what about the comments form ? what about a links page? the reason i am interested in comments is mostly because i'm intrigued in who actually would find this stuff interesting outside those directly involved with the garden. little personal gossip will be revealed.

oh, i did think about the spots on the sunflower leaves though -- i think we should test that hypothesis about "the water drops resting on the leaves act as lenses that magnify the heat from the sun" . it doesn't seem reasonable to me that water droplets would do that. for if so, water drops on my skin would burn like hell on a sunny day.
however, my guess it is insect damage and/or disease damage. those plants are really buggy. i tried misting the sunflowers with the soapy water solution -- didn't kill a single bug. they flew off, and then they just came back within 20 minutes. so much for that tip (i got that from an organic gardening book called "the frugal gardener").

Back from Cleveland. I would say those Irish folk sure know how to party, only I can't, because it seems to involve playing Eagles songs all night.

Today I took a look around, and was happy to see several dozen purple coneflower in full bloom. The sunflowers continue to do well, though I noticed some "sunburn" on some of the leaves (most likely caused by watering with the sprinkler in the afternoon--the water drops resting on the leaves act as lenses that magnify the heat from the sun, burning the leaves and turning them an unpleasant shade of purplish-brown). Must remember to hand water with the can, unless it's cloudy. I noticed the shed was open, and closed it securely without incident. I'm glad I didn't know about the wasps when I went in for the wheelbarrow today, or I might not have bothered!

I did a little spot weeding today, and put down newspaper and straw around the corn--the last of the current crops to be so treated. Also watered the tomatoes and peppers. At this point we will have to be watering (feet, not heads!) these plants every day, barring rainy days. Alternating days of wet with dry spells can cause the fruits to crack and get woody, which I'm hoping to avoid this year. So far it seems that the tomato plants that we've pruned back have about the same number of fruits on them as the others. Whether the pruning results in larger fruits will be determined in the next month. Jim, didja get a look at that one banana pepper?! Holy nightshade, Batman!

I did try a couple of the peas, which were very tasty. Will pick off a few of the largest each day.

P.S. Jim was upgraded to Admin status today. Congratulations, Jim!

--today, i watered very thouroughly the strawberry patch and the impatiens by hand/hose.
--i also watered very deeply the vegetable garden, using the lawn sprinkler, discovering that both sides of the garden get watered if it is placed in the center of the two gardens, on the house side (set to "left")... let that go for a few hours.
--watered the tiny herb patch deeply.
--i discovered with the water pressure at the garden, it takes 10 seconds to hit the 1 gallon mark in the bucket using the hose.
--meanwhile, i weeded the strawberry patch, and spot weeded here and there.
-- the tomato plants all seem to have tomatoes started on them.
-- there's a few hot peppers already, a few look ready to pick. very early! some animal seems to have nibbled the tops off of the peppers... might set back some of the yield.
--there's plenty of peas available for harvest... pick regularly to keep productive, the garden book says
-- i donated a 1.5 gallon bucket and a few spray bottles.
--i watered the compost container with 1 gallon of water. that stuff is Hot! smells properly earthy.
--i discovered wasps building nests in the shed (suprise) and i ran far away when i angered them. i dared not to shut the shed door.