The cucumbers are coming!

I planted 6 cucumber plants in the straw bale garden. I know that's probably overkill, but I'm crazy about cucumbers. Especially refrigerator cucumbers. My mother used to make refrigerator pickles (that's what we called them) with cucumbers from our garden, so whenever I eat them they remind me of my childhood, and my mom. <3

The cucumber vines are gangly and I don't have them trellised correctly. I should probably get to that that this week.

Cucumber #2 (Edwin and I at cucumber #1 this weekend)

About 10 days ago I ate the first red tomato from the garden. I was very excited, I made homemade mozzarella, and picked basil from the garden. Then I sliced the tomato and put it on french bread with the mozz, basil, salt and pepper and grilled it in my pannini maker. Unfortunately, the tomato was mushy tasting, which was a bit disappointing. I think it might be because the weather had been unseasonably cool the past few weeks, and that tomato took forever and a day to become ripe.

The weather for the next 10 days will be in the low 80's according to the forecast, which is good news for the au courant tomatoes growing on the vines. And....we will finally have a break from the rain (yippie!), which means I will have to actually remember to turn on the hose a couple of times this week.

I think this is the Stupice tomato

Cherry Tomato- either Isis Candy (gold) or Cherry Cascade Hybrid (red)

I am not sure what is going on, but one of my summer squash plants is wilted (the plant on the left in the picture below). I looked online, and one explanation for this may be root rot; the roots are getting too much water. Not much I can do about that, since it has been raining almost daily. The plant has a few good leaves, and the flowers look okay. It looks like smaller leaves are coming in, so it might be able to recover.

Wilted squash plant on left.

Finally the pepper plant and the eggplants are getting bigger. They were staying so small, I think because of the cool weather.

3 eggplants, a pepper plant and nasturtium

Round cucumber plants and tomatoes

This straw bale garden is about a week ahead of my other traditional garden in the yard, but I feel it is doing much better. The plants are much bigger, and I think that has to do will the extra nitrogen and fewer weeds.

Giant basil leaves

Lots of parsley, basil and nasturtium

Beans, beans good for the heart

It has only been two days since my last post, but there is already more to see!

The temperature has been in the 80's the last few days, which has really helped the garden grow. It was hot this morning but I didn't bother watering because the bales were damp, and it is supposed to rain today. That is another nice thing about the straw bale garden. It is okay if you forget to water one day because the bales hold so much moisture.

Dolloff beans

The tomato is ripe for the picking!

Cherry tomatoes

These squash leaves seem bigger than they were two days ago

Baby cucumbers

More baby cukes

Land of the ...Mosquito

Happy 4th of July!!

I did not post about my straw bale garden in the month of June, although things have been going (growing) very well. This year we had the wettest June in Illinois EVER. Well at least since 1895, which is how far back the records go. We had 9.37 inches of rain this year, with the second wettest year happening in 1902 with 8.27 inches.

This July we are breaking the record for the most mosquitoes in Illinois EVER (probably).

https://climateillinois.wordpress.com/2015/06/30/wettest-june-and-now-second-month-on-record-for-illinois/

 I have been meaning to post an update, but one thing that has been keeping me out of the garden are the mosquitoes. I am not kidding, they are extreme. I decided to take the plunge today, so I loaded up on bug spray and ventured in. I still ended getting about 10 or so bites anyway, 4 of them on my face. As I was trying to take pictures of the plants the bugs were flying in my face and ears, they were everywhere, it was horrible. I am surprised that they are not visible in the pictures because they were pretty much all I could see.

Kale and tomatoes

Beans, peas, kale

Tomatoes, summer squash, nasturtium and basil.

My first (and still only tomato fruit)

tomato, parsley, nasturtium, cucumber (there are some tiny cucumbers growing on the vines!)

Pepper and eggplants (and nasturtium)
The peppers and eggplant are still small, due to the cooler
temperatures we've been having

more cucumbers

pepper, tomato and eggplant

You can see from the bales that the spiders are thriving as well as a result of the rainfall.

I have to say I am pleased with how this garden experiment is going so far and can't wait to enjoy the fruits of my (non) labor. Seriously, I have hardly done any work since fertilizing and planting. Today is the first day in probably a month that I turned on the drip hose. But mostly I have just peeked in every once in a while to see how things are going. Today I pruned the tomato plants, they all have buds. I should probably add another wire to trellis the tomatoes, beans, and maybe the cucumbers.

Gardeners usually spend a lot of time in the garden weeding, but guess what! There are hardly any weeds in my straw bale garden! (We won't talk about my other two gardens). The few weeds that do come up are very easy to remove.