My garden, early July

When I was in Gr. 8 I did my public speaking speech on "How gardening ruins my life." Since then I've learned to really enjoy gardening and I have especially taken an interest in overcoming gardening problems. So, I'm indulging in posting pictures of my garden as it looked on July 6th. My first batch of beans died with frost. These are the replanted ones.

My corn is the tallest in the neighborhood. The carrots are thick in some places and thin in others. But, I'm sure that has nothing to do with Alyssa being the one who planted.

I started my tomatoes and pepper bedding plants under floating row covers which I left on til about when school got out near the end of June. You can see the row cover on the ground by these tomatoes. The plants are pretty big, and are just starting to blossom.

The whole raspberry patch is like this, thick with berries.

Peas are as high as the fence. The deer haven't eaten any since I covered them with bird netting a couple of weeks ago. Lots of pods have formed already, but they aren't quite ready yet.

Just waiting for the dwarf sweet peas to bloom at the back.

You may know that last year I worked tirelessly on my garden with very little harvest (except for 260 lbs of potatoes). Last year was in a death battle with the weeds and also mulched with grass clippings, leaves, garden waste of all kinds. I did this because the soil was in bad shape, greyish and dry and clumpy with almost no organic matter. This spring I brought in a small load of manure and a couple of bales of peat moss. When I rototilled, the soil seemed much softer and richer. I am very happy that the garden is growing much better this year, and is actually ahead of the neighbors. The raspberry bushes are also heavy laden with berries so I think I will have a good crop of raspberries too this year. I've been continuing to mulch with grass clippings this year and Alyssa thinks that is why I haven't won "yard of the week" because grass in the flower beds looks tacky. i figure when the flowers are thick enough you can barely see the grass clippings and they are excellent for holding in moisture.