Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

According to Wikipedia, that English nursery rhyme is probably not about a garden.

Well, I figure it is time for a garden update. It has been a while. The pictures here are kind of mixed up in that I took them on different days and at different times.

The theme in the garden this week is watering. It has been hot and windy and that dries everything out. I've been watering about 1/2 of the garden each evening so that each part gets watered every other day.

I usually try to use a trench to water rows or a moat to water hills or tomatoes. This is more labor intensive than just using a sprinkler or something but I think it gives better results and saves water. Besides, while the trench or moat is filling I grab a hoe and work on the weeds.

Our cucumber hills and the climbing morning glories. Donovan likes morning glories a lot so I planted a bunch this year. I put up some lattice so they would have something to climb.

I planted three colors - this one and the one below and a red. It doesn't look like any of the red ones came up.

Maybe it is hard to see, but these are the tomatoes. I built the cages myself out of fencing. They work pretty well.

Sweet corn and the giant sunflowers (the same as in the photo at the top). The corn should be ready tomorrow.

Here I am filling a moat around a tomato plant. Usually I just lay the watering wand down and fill them that way.

Our pumpkin plants. The wind and the cutworms decimated the plants of two of the four hills I planted and left only three plants in the two remaining hills. Right now there are three pumpkins on the three plants.

This is one of the sunflowers you can see behind the pumpkins in the previous photo. That bumble bee sure was busy.

When there is space left in the garden I'll often plant some flowers. This plant is called Bells of Ireland. As you can see, the flowers are green. Green is commonly associated with Ireland and Irish things.

This is one of the flowers from the bed in the front yard. I don't remember the name of this one, though. It is one of the perennials we planted this year.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed this photo essay!