Compost bin fixed and brussel sprouts

Today Sabrina and I fixed the compost bin. About a month ago we noticed that the side of it had been chewed, creating a hole large enough for a small rodent to enter the bin. Sabrina worked hard at mixing and moving the compost and then we attached the metal plate with screws. Let's hope it holds.

In other garden news, the brussel sprouts are growing slowly, but still growing. The fresh planting of greens seems to be doing well so far.

Snake or fast-moving worm?

This morning when I went to water the tomatoes, something caught my eye - a long, quick moving gray thing that slithered away along the tall grass next to the tomato bed. It moved more gracefully and quickly than many of the worms I've see this year, so that makes me think it was a snake. If so, I have no idea what kind, but I hope it likes mice.

Planting new greens

This weekend and this morning I planted a new round of mesclun greens, arugula and spinach. We'll see what comes up.

Our first eggplant and cucumber!

In the past few days, the cucumbers have been spreading like crazy and our first eggplant blossom decided to fruit. As the summer days pass, we enjoy more and more tomatoes from our variety of plants. The Isis Candy are super sweet and delicious.

Green beans, tomatoes and deck completed

In the past two weeks we've been able to enjoy a handful of green beans and lots of tomatoes - mostly a hybrid called Juliet. I've been eating them on toasted cheese. We had a few of them last night in our salad. They're pretty good. Our Roma plant is also producing - just picked the first one off this morning. The kohlrabi has been slow, but worth it.

Now that the deck is done, we have much easier access to the back yard. In the past two weeks I've worked out there minimally. We've eaten every dinner out there since it was completed on Tuesday.

Tomatoes and strawberries

By now, most of our plants are heavy with ripening tomatoes. One of the isis candy variety is almost ready. We should have been training the tomatoes in the cages all along since planting because they were a bit of a mess to cage after the fact. I'll keep a better eye on them.

Last night we also completed the strawberry cover project. There are new berries coming in so just in time. Now we need to make something similar for the blueberries. Our low-bush berries are ripening.

Under Construction!

We've had limited access to the yard and garden since June 25 due to the construction of the deck. Today, the base structure is being finished. Looks like we'll be reseeding the yard or finding an lawn alternative, so I spent some time finding out the most successful way to do that. This will also give me the opportunity to redesign all the flowerbed shapes if I want to and that's ok by me.

Now I just need to figure out how to deter the squirrels from eating all the suet.