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The Vagary

  • Elizabeth Navarro
    • 2 posts
     
    June 6, 2022 3:03 PM EDT

    At this point, the garden feels like it’s on the verge of some kind of explosion. Every day, one plant or another has begun to flower or bear fruit, or it’s doubled in size. if you are interested in this topic you can learn more with https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lily-plant-identification/id1570145257 ; .We have a couple of slow-growers, including the chives and basil I bought at The Vagary, but if the beautiful sun and occasional good, soaking rain keeps up, I think the exponential growth will continue.

    June 8 status shot

    Memorial Day was brutally hot, so we brought the plants home that  and left them on the back porch overnight. The next evening, after work, I went out and shoehorned them into the garden. I tucked the alpine strawberries along the edge near the peppers, which I’ve now heard was a less-than-good idea for disease reasons. I flanked the two chive plants around the leeks on one end of the garden, and Steve and I added some peat to one corner so there’d be a little more room to squeeze in the garlic chives.

    Sickly cucumber“Tomatoes and basil go together,” I told Steve, displaying my usual shaky gardening logic before I plunked the basil near the Big Bertha tomato plant. Hopefully it’s not so near that the tomatoes will overshadow the basil.

    The rosemary plant went in a small pot that used to hold one of Steve’s houseplants. It’s probably going to need to be repotted, if it shows any sign of growth at all, but hey, it’s in more dirt now than when it arrived in Iowa.

    That night, Steve and I discussed pulling the cucumber plant. It struggled early on, and, as you can see in this photo from May 21, spent some time in a state of diseased-looking wilt. Even though it wasn’t expensive, and we certainly could stand to open up a little space in the plot, it saddened us both to think about actually pulling it out. Admit defeat this early in the growing season? Never! We decided to grant it a week’s stay of execution.

    Recovered cucumberIt turned out to be a good decision. Shortly after we agreed to let it live, the cucumber plant began growing, and now is big enough that Steve gave it its own cage this week. Go, Marketmore, go!