I put shoes on for the first time since last Friday when I got home from work. Technically, my isolation ends after tomorrow, but I have been temperature free since Wednesday and am feeling relatively normal, albeit tired.
My first trip was to weigh in, masked, and did not stay for the meeting.
Our second trip was a walk to the farmers market to get some tomato plants. We snagged two and a cucumber as well. I’ve never killed a cucumber plant, because I’ve never had one in the garden.
This meant that said plants needed to be planted. Retrieved the hose and tomato cage parts from under the house. I managed to get them all planted and watered.
There are a lot of layers here. 1) the pink traditional cages. 2) the Gardeners Blue Ribbon “cages” that are more free form, and can be modified to align with branches that need more support. 3) a 1-inch square fabric that gets wrapped around everything to keep the critters at bay. I’m looking at you, raccoons. I don’t usually put up all layers at once, but I may get distracted later.
As a bonus, I got to see a Dark Eyed Junco. I heard an unknown bird yesterday and used the Merlin app to identify the stranger. Today, I saw one, at least based on the picture supplied by Merlin.
While wandering the garden, I noticed that 3 of the 4 iris I planted a month or so ago were still alive. And one threw up a flower stalk, which I dutifully cut, per the first year instructions provided by Seattle Tilth. They can be allowed to bloom in year 1, but may not survive or be as strong in year 2 and beyond.
I checked the strawberries, and there are flowers and early fruit. We’ll see if there is any harvest this year.
Finally, the raspberries are blooming. The patch needs a lot of work to rein in both the weeds and rogue plants. To that end, I ordered several more of the flexible tomato cages to create a fence with big openings. My years of wrangling with bamboo lengths may be at an end. Every year, they have to be reworked, and it always feels like an “it’ll do for this year” solution.
This is more effort than I have put out since I last had shoes on. Ready for a break.
Raincharm's Weblog 
May 24, 2025 at 6:58 pm |
Glad you’re recovering; it takes a while to get rid of the fatigue. I haven’t grown tomatoes for a long time since mine got blight. All that work and water with little to show for it. I’ve already eaten several strawberries off my three different plants. They are everbearing so don’t produce much fruit at the same time. However, I’m often eating a couple strawberries in September/October.
May 24, 2025 at 9:37 pm |
Everbearing? I might have to look into those. This is our 3rd or 4th year with this group. I got a few plants from a friend and after the first year they have been spreading themselves around one area of the garden.