After acquiring a new modem I can finally trust my internet to come up and stay on long enough to eke out a post. After many times looking at The Bird-house garden, with great green shades of envy, I took a few alley walks around my neighborhood and discovered my garden is either even with or slightly ahead of the progress here. It must be a weather microclime. Still I am not happy with the results of the "No dig" garden experiment. It might be better the second time but I will never know as next year I am reverting to the tried and true 50/50 compost/soil with a bag of steer manure in each box. I need consistency and results especially with today's grocery prices.
This type of gardening I've found to be very labor intensive for watering, not very kind to young plants on very hot days, and also very troublesome for getting a good watering soak for plants. Since the straw/alfalfa composts at different rates within the boxes it creates deep pockets that the water runs off into and pools. The water also runs through the compost and right through the straw/alfalfa onto the ground underneath.
My corn is doing terrible but I do have some new corn in, a reliable favorite "Silver Queen", that I am hoping will come on strong. The tomatoes are just forming, the okra is small, the beans have a ways to go, and I've only harvested 10 summer squash. On the bright side the egg plant and peppers are really coming on strong and my watermelon is finally flowering.
ALL PICTURES FROM 2 WEEKS AGO.
You're fine! Trust me! I'm having my garden failures. I'm just not writing about them! Tomatoes are doing well, but melon crops are not. Tried mixing them with the pumpkins this year. Bad idea. F'ing birds stole every last freaking pluot on the tree and now they're consuming the grapes at a record rate. F'ing birds!
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