Just wanted to post another garden update. We built one more planter box. This one is an an odd space that looks like it wouldn't get much sun since it is wedged in-between the barn and the wall of the back planter box. But this is the south side of the barn, so it actually ends up getting sun pretty much all day. I wanted to try growing a three sisters garden which is a companion planting of corn, beans and squash common in Iroquois gardens. The corn acts as a support for the beans, the beans fix nitrogen in the soil and the squash covers the soil to prevent weeds and hold in moisture. The corn is Stowell's evergreen sweet corn. I planted it in about mid April. I planted the beans a couple of weeks later. When I read up on three sisters gardens, it said to wait until your corn is 6" tall before planting the beans or else the beans will outgrow the corn. I think mine was almost that tall, but some of the beans are already taller than the corn next to them. The beans are rattlesnake snap beans. I bought both the corn and bean seeds savers exchange. The squash was just butternut squash seeds that I saved from one from the CSA and some transplanted mystery squash that has been sprouting all over the garden, probably from the compost bin.
I finally pulled out the end of the fava beans from main raised vegetable garden. I love fava beans, but they just took up way too much room. They kept flowering and producing more fava beans so it was really hard to just give up on them and pull them out. I wanted to get tomatoes and tomatillos in the ground though, so I finally just composted them. If I plant them again next year I think I will put them in the new narrow planter box so they will be confined to a smaller space and won't flop over on other things. Before I pulled out the favas some of my tomatillo plants that I started from seed were just getting too big for their tiny pots. I gave up and just planted two in big pots. They are blooming now and have such pretty blossoms. Supposedly they aren't self fertile so I put the pots right next to each other so the bees have an easy time going from one flower to the next.
The first strawberry is just about ready to pick. I have to make sure I get to it before the slugs or squirrels.
The plums are getting bigger.
Lots of flowers in the herb garden.
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