Summer

Now summer is officially here. It is so hot I cannot be out in the garden more than 10 minutes even with proper gear. So I have postponed the backyard upper level demolition to a cloudy day...
I just go out to pick vegetables and get the eggs a couple of times a day.

Blueberries and cucumbers

However, something unexpected happened... I went to check up on the melons only to find that four of them had already detached themselves from their vines. Although they were on the ground when they were attached, at some point they must have thought they were ripe or something... So I brought them in.

Very tiny melons

They are edible, albeit very little meat... Extremely sweet but a little hard at places. I guess I have to leave them in the fridge to ripen more? I have no idea to be honest. Maybe (well actually I know it for certain) the soil wasn't containing much nourishment. Next time around I will sort that out of course.

The battle continues...

Bugs and weeds... yepp, every day there is a new thing that is eating or blocking my veggies.
Today, I was so glad that my tomatoes are finally getting some color, when I spotted holes in back of 3 of them... upon closer look I saw the culprit too. This was done overnight.

have you no shame?

Needless to say, the fat worm became a nice snack full of vitamins for the chickens.

1 Year

Last weekend it was exactly 1 year ago we moved into the house. I think for a total amateur I have done a pretty decent job with the garden.
Backyard which looked like this:

Before... 

Now looks like this:

After...

The steep weed lawn and the trees are gone. Instead there are solid steps and a big water tank. I started planting melons, strawberries etc to improve the soil over the coming years. At the bottom right you can see the three passion fruit seedlings climbing the net. It is all still work in progress though.
The main garden area looked like this when we moved in:

Before...waste of space

Mainly just grass and lots of weeds. A tiny attempt at a bed in the middle with an abandoned parsley and a couple of sunflowers. Otherwise the ground is completely covered with grass roots and solid just under the lawn and hard clay beneath that.
Now it looks like this:

After...upper part

After...lower part

Pond, chicken run, young fruit trees and bushes, compost bins, and lots of vegetable going on in the beds. Still room for a lot of improvements and many lessons to learn, but at least a good start. Thanks for following me so far.

Tree identification

Ok, so here is one more picture of the tree near the blueberries which I don't know what it is.

The trunk

By the way, here is another different unknown tree...

I don't think the berries are edible

Tilting Corn

It hasn't been very windy. We haven't had any typhoon or even slightly strong winds yet.
But for some reason when I came home yesterday a couple of my tomato branches had broken by the wind, and almost all of the corns had fallen over and lying there horizontally, their root barely in the ground. Very weird... maybe I should have planted their seeds deeper, or maybe the soil is too loose.. anyway, I lifted and set them straight, and hilled them up a bit.
The cobs and the stalks had already started to take compensating measures, based on the gravity and the sun I guess. They were no longer straight but kind of bent...

Not what I expected...

Tiny Jungles

The wet season is upon us, and the weeds are growing like never before. It's almost like I didn't even remove any weeds to start with. Well next year I won't bother picking all the weed early on cause it will just be replaced. Hmm..
The blueberry bush is huge. Actually it is 2 bushes with a bit of space between them but it is tough to get in between them cause they are  so overgrown and weighted down by all the delicious berries. Looked closer and saw that some non-blueberry bushes also grow there. Identified the biggest one as ornamental flower and removed it cause those flowers are not really my type. They bloom late and are not that beautiful and don't smell good. Just take up space is what they do.

The yellow flowers in the middle are no more

With those gone, I can get in there and pull out lots of other annoying weeds too. Have to remember to prune the blueberries in the winter to make them more accessible. Maybe tie up a couple of branches and train them not to all lean in the same direction. As of now they all cover my patch of eggplants, which despite the shade keeps on growing.

The eggplants have just started blooming

Next to the eggplants I have my pepper patch which also is shadowed over by the blueberries. Still... they too seem to get enough sun somehow

Couple of pimans in the pepper jungle

Another jungle that is starting to get completely out of control is the cucumber. I get a good size cucumber every day these days though so I am not complaining. Keep pruning the lower leafs as soon as they turn yellow or start getting spotty and all is fine.

cucumber monster

I would love to also list the carrot jungle, but unfortunately they tend to die all the time. Some bug must really like those young carrot tops. It leaves all other young leafs alone, and chews up only the carrots' greens. So here is the carrot patch after two rounds of seeds. All gone to waste.

Hmm... the carrot jungle

Next to the carrots is the little patch with the huuuuge sunflowers.

Getting there.. I hope it gets big enough so I can eat the seeds

Another real jungle is the strawberry patch. I have made a mistake to have it real wide, to allow the runners to roam free. In doing so, I have made the middle parts inaccessible to myself. The patch is dominated by strawberries as they spread around, but underneath the weeds are lurking and if I don't pull them every once in a while I think they will take over easily. I should have started off with black mulch sheet. Oh well, live and learn I guess. Oh, and moles also have dug a couple of shallow tunnels there. Anyway, I have started to make a new patch of strawberries in the backyard's lowest step, using young runners from this patch. At the moment there is only 4-5 of them there but they will spread before winter I hope. Stupid enough I did not use black plastic mulch there neither. D'oh!

strawberry fields forever

Here is a picture of the backyard where the tiny strawberry leafs can be seen in the right corner of the lower step. Originally I was gonna have flowers there but what the heck I thought. There is enough flowers around anyway to attract good bugs.

Still haven't cleaned up the left side for the future runners

The melons are getting bigger but only 2 or 3 are getting to regular size so far. The leafs of the plants on top are all yellowing and dying so I am afraid this first round has been quite a let down. I think the soil was not ready. It was too much clay where the roots wanted to expand, and all the water kind of stayed in there and made the leafs yellow. That plus the brown bugs eating at the leafs, and hiding in the weeds above. Even if I dug quite deep where the seedlings were put and put compost, the soil around that hole was tough clay. The second level melons which were put there later and at first didn't seem to have a prayer have now grown into huge things. I did not prune or water them extra but just left them alone kind of. They seem healthier so we'll see from the end results. If the fruits are better then next round I will just leave the melons be on their own.
As for the soil, I will plant something else for a couple of years to make the soil softer and ready for melons.
The top row, which is full of weeds, I have started to clean. It is a big project. I dig real deep, remove ALL roots (most of the weeds there are the root/rhizome type) including the huge roots of the trees I cut down earlier. To keep the weeds at bay for a while, I will plant potatoes there first, once the soil has been cleaned. I have still not dug enough to see what actually separates the outside weed jungle and my side of the fence. I hope it is a tall concrete wall, but I don't think it is. I think it is just posts holding up the fence, buried deep....That is where the rhizomes of the weeds come in. I will use roundup to kill the weeds near the fence, on the outside. In best case I will cut and cover the soil on the other side.... Not decided yet. So far I have only dug like 30 cm wide and half a meter deep and cleaned the soil, so still there is a lot to go.
Enough of that. Let's change the subject.
After taking those pictures I came inside and found this little fellow crawling on my arm.

Baby terminator

I let him out to go eat some baddies and grow big. There are lots of baby praying mantis running around in my garden, a couple of different types and colors. The frogs have all vanished. I guess they tried running around too but were picked up by birds or maybe stomped on by me accidentally... even though they had a couple of nice hiding places near the pond, I found some of them in the wrong side of the garden, and returned them in my hand. But now there are none of them left. Just a pond with some insects and greens. Next to the pond there is a mikan tree, with three tiny fruit still hanging on there and getting bigger.

Can you see all the 3 mikans?

After my last complaints the corn must have heard cause now suddenly tiny corns are sprouting from the sides.

Children of the corn

Peanuts getting larger and larger...

Peanuts with a side of garlic and potatoes

And so do the tomatoes, but still no red ones.

Come on already, you look so delicious. Turn red soon.

By the way, I am trying to identify this unknown tree between the chicken run and the blueberry bush. Is it fruit? It takes a lot of space so I need to know. Hmm... here is what its leafs looks like

What am I?

Good morning sun

Finally this morning the first sunflower opened. The sunflowers are getting really tall now. The tallest, still without a flower, is about 2,5 meters tall.... I had to hill them a bit yesterday to get a better root holding, as I saw tiny roots appear just above ground. I also tied them together to prevent them from tipping over when there is strong wind.

Banzai!

In front of the sunflowers, in the picture is the asparagus patch with the first year plants.