Raspberries and More...and More

 

We got some raspberry canes from some friends of ours, and in they went! Bam. Raspberries. 

We weren't planning on those until next year, so it did entail a little bit of redesign. I cut out 8 square ft. of carrots, and put the beans into the long experimental vegetable bed - Mitgarten 2. 

And planted those beans.

The day's gone quickly. It's been a sort of desultory slog from one job to the next. Not exactly unpleasant, but I'm worn out from the 18 mile run yesterday, and the day is not nearly as warm or sunny as yesterday. Everything feels a little muted. And it whooshed by amazingly quickly. 

I was forced to plant one of the Wisconsin Chief tomatoes out in the Upper Garden because it got big enough to dump itself over in the greenhouse. Hopefully the uber-cloche will keep it safe. I was forced to plant another Purple Cherokee tomato there as well because it just wasn't looking healthy at all, and I figured what the heck, worst thing that happens is that it dies, and that's probably going to happen if I keep it in the greenhouse. And one of the larger yellow pear tomatoes went in, too. Again, it was looking a little sickly, and I figured what's the worst case?

And I planted clover down between the beds in the Lower Garden. And everything seemed to need water, so the trees got water and the rows of extremely reluctant carrots got water.

I replanted the beets. We might get a few out of the first round planted back in early April, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. So I plopped in some of the weird multi-colored beet seeds that I bought at...a large chain store...recently.

Kirstin invested in a few pretty flowers to brighten things up. They're looking good.

One sort of epic failure was the attempt to plant giant sunflowers in the new area that we're not planning to mow in front of the tree to the left of the deck. I took the time to add some soil, dig little holes in the lawn, and neatly plant seeds on Saturday afternoon.

Before Sunday morning, the squirrels had helpfully dug them all up and devoured them. 

However, I have a cunning plan: 

1) I replanted with bee feed seeds

2) I'm going to try again with the sunflowers, only this time I'm going to stake down some galvanized poultry fencing on the ground to protect them. We shall see. 

Onward!