Well, it's not been the best of springs for farming, but most of the stuff is in the ground finally. Last Tuesday was pretty nice so when we got home from work we went straight to the garden and started planting tomatoes. Shawn, Teri, and I got almost all of them in, and then Teri finished it up on Wednesday morning. She also attached them all to their fences and watered them in. Then the weather system arrived, and it poured, about 0.9 inches. I think we got almost 3 inches in 10 days. I realize that doesn't seem like much compared to the mayhem in the southeast, but that's a lot for us--almost a quarter of a year's total. Anyway, the tomatoes survived the rain. The plants at the house got some hail damage.
June 9 is Treaty Day for the Umatilla Tribes. We were to have a holiday (taken on Thursday), but it was very clear that a lot of gardening needed to be done and none of it would be done on Thursday, which was still plenty wet. So I transferred my holiday to Monday.
Friday and Saturday were still pretty wet, but we were able to do some weeding (everyone's favorite) and got some seeds in the ground. This included corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, and beets. Saturday I was able to go to market with scapes, dried peppers, basil plants, and artichoke plants. It was a beautiful day and things sold pretty well. I also learned that from our stand we can pick up the wireless from the library. Potential for blogging directly from the market--I'm sure everyone is thrilled.
Sunday we were putting plants in the ground no matter what. Shawn rototilled and it was fairly wet, but doable. We sorted through the peppers and figured out how many of each we wanted and got approximately 200 plants in (thanks again to Teri for the help!). It took pretty much all day.
The ladybugs showed up pretty much immediately. Yes, there are aphids, so we were very happy to see them.
Today I got all the eggplant, artichokes, and basil in. All the tall peppers were attached to their support sticks. It's hard to know what's best to do--sometimes it seems like the stakes help and sometimes it seems they just give a place for the plants to snap in half. The wind blew pretty hard last night, and all were fine. We'll see what this next change of weather brings.
What's left? Cucumbers and cantaloupe. Once they're in, I'll be happy if it rains for a bit until we get the irrigation systems installed.
We've been having internet problems, so I'll work on photos in a separate post.
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