How Does My Garden Grow?

Following up on my first garden post & pics with some updates! Well, with Pittsburgh's crazy onslaught of rain and thunderstorms, some of the garden is exploding with growth while some is, well... struggling. The storms and downpours have made for a lot of cleanup in the garden, and for hours I've picked little weeds, removed sticks ond rocks, and pruned demolished leaves on the greens. Some of the pics I'm sharing are pre-pruning and cleaning up from the storms.














Week 4

The tomato plant has grown a lot in height and has gotten it's first flowers! Yay! I think we'll need to trim it back a bit so that it is less spindly and more bushy. The cucumber plants are nicely building up. They are vining, but no flowers yet. We expect them soon.













Cukes and tomatoes.

The beans are growing, too! We saw our first sprouts the very day I last posted about the garden. Been training them to vine up the poles. The carrots are getting their *real* carrot leaves- woot!

Green beans (above) and carrots.

Urgh. The lettuce plants we put in the garden are slowly growing, but have taken a big beating by the storming. :/ So many leaves were tattered and buried in the mud that the plants seemed shrunken when I was done pruning. None of our own lettuce in salads yet because of this.The baby lettuce and spinach were totally pummeled by the heavy rain, smushed and flattened into the soil. Pruning was more like lifting the tiny leaves out of the mud and brushing them off (what was left) so that they can hopefully revive.

Pummeled greens. :(

Wildflowers? Eh. Also ravaged by rain and by the rain streaming off of the roof of the shed they are planted beside. I don't have high hopes for the explosion of flowers I initially hoped for. I added more seed and fertilized, so we'll see what happens.

Wildflowers. Sparse and beaten down or washed away. Come on little sprouts- you can do it!

Guess what? We have a rogue pumpkin plant in the garden, a surprise product of either last year's planting or the compost we added to the soil. :) So cool!

More later...

PUMPKIN!

Sophie is an excellent helper.