Had a bit of a scare this past weekend with the nasty storms that blew through. It knocked 3 of my mater plants down, and I rushed out during the rain and put cages around those 3 plants.

I had a hard time fitting them into their cages, so today I went and picked up a 150 foot roll of concrete reinforcing wire which I will make cages out of this week (it really was the plan from the beginning, I just had to improvise when the storm turned nasty). I think I will only be able to get 24 or so cages of the size I want, so I will figure out something else for the one or two extra.

All my plants were covered in mud and dirt, so I went out and brushed off all of the leaves on the tomatoes and peppers. It is kind of like a back rub for a person. They like to be rubbed and the dirt gotten off of them; they were much happier after that. 🙂

My first pepper pods of the year! The first one is a Purple Jalapeno (very pretty purple flowers that turn into purple pods) and the second is a Tam Jalapeno (a mild version of jalapeno, though most jalapenos are mild for me to begin with).

So the Golden King, Malakite, Cosmonaut, Monomak, and Brave General all have buds now, and so do 11 of my pepper plants. Yay for the garden!

I am also going to try foliar feeding this year, spraying the foliage with a watered down fertilizer. Plants apparently absorb about 90% of the nutrients this way, rather than the 10% or so that they get through the roots when you straight up water them with fertilizer.

The onions are doing well. I need to find time to mound up dirt around them before I leave for the 4th of July weekend. You can see the carrots behind the onions, and they seem to be doing very well too.

Our lettuce did well, and produced/is producing more than we need. The green oakleaf wasn’t our favorite, so I kind of just let it go to seed. I love the red and green grand rapids, great flavor, and they are supposed to produce all summer long without bolting. You can see some red oakleaf at the end, and they seem to be a little more heat tolerant than the green.

I think that is about it for now. We are supposed to have sun for the next week, so I wanted to make sure I got pictures out before everything grows like crazy 🙂