First harvest update

The first few little strawberries

Spring has been kind to the Bee Garden! The weather here has been so mild compared to last season, and the garden is looking good! We've got everything all planted out according to our plan, and it's been such a pleasure watching our little seedlings grow into their new homes. We've enjoyed our first harvests of a couple kinds of lettuce, and a few strawberries, radishes and snow peas. Some of the herbs have reached picking size, as well, giving us an early supply of cilantro, basil and green garlic. As usual, we've endured a couple of pest problems so far. The squirrels have been up to their usual shenanigans, digging in the pots, uprooting more than a few tender seedlings. Our small carrots have been about three-quarters wiped out by the tree rats. We started out using ground cayenne pepper sprinkled over the pots to deter them, but have since switched to ground cinnamon, which seems to work a little better. Unfortunately, all of our corn sprouts have been killed by a small beetle we found out is called the southern corn billbug. This creepy little guy burrows into the corn roots, digging up into the stem from the bottom, killing the sprout. The corn had pretty poor germination rates for starters, giving us only 4 little sprouts... and now they are all dead. Time of year supposedly has something to do with presence of billbugs, so we will try again in a couple months to grow some corn for a fall harvest. Otherwise, everything's doing really well! Stay tuned for next post, which should be coming up shortly. The plants are growing so fast, they'll have doubled in size by time you finish reading this post...

Clockwise from top left: front porch scene, yard scene, siamese twin radish, garden salad, first harvest

Clockwise from top left: heatwave tomatoes and lettuce, bush cherry tomatoes and green garlic, snowpeas and zucchini, cucumbers, and lettuce and a small corn sprout