Not much activity for me in the garden this past week. We were having the entire interior of the house painted, and it rained pretty much every day. Finally it stopped yesterday and the garden started drying out. It finally started warming up too. Nothing was really growing until the past 2 days.

The green beans have sprouted…2 varieties are doing better than the 3rd. If they don’t pop out in the next couple of days, I’ll probably plant some new seeds. Problem is, they’re being munched as soon as they sprout! I mixed up some insecticidal soap spray tonight (1 tablespoon of Murphy’s Oil Soap in one gallon of water), and sprayed all of the bean plants and the strawberries.

The slugs (and birds or whatever else is munching them) is winning against us in the battle of the berries. I put out a dish of beer last night, and today there were probably 10 slugs sunk in it. Ew! I haven’t actually seen a bird in the patch, but it doesn’t look like the slugs could be eating huge chunks out of the berries (they seem to do their munching in strips and holes). At this rate, we’re not going to get to eat any more berries ourselves (we’ve only had 4!).

The little onions seemed to like the cool and rainy weather, they’ve perked up and have grown extra leaves! We may actually get some onions out of them after all. I will have to figure out how to handle them next year. I either need better lights (I want to get my own seed starting lights at home instead of trying it on my desk at work) to get the seedlings to grow better, or maybe I need to start them later. I’m aiming for the first option! I have Copra seeds left that I will try for next year. I’m also definitely going to plant them closer together so they can support each other.

The tomatoes are just there. The heat we’ll be getting this week should help them along. Same for the peppers. Their leaves have been yellowing a bit, but hopefully the heat will kick start them as well.

The carrots I’m a little worried about. I see a few little sprouts out there, but not many. Not sure if the heat will help them sprout too, or if I got them a little too deep? Time will tell. I have more seeds of those as well, so I can reseed if necessary.

The zucchini plants are doing awesome. They tripled in size in the past 2 hot days! The cucumbers are only doing about 50%. I planted 15 seeds, and I think there are only 4 seedlings out there. 4 in one hill, and 0 in the other. I loosened the soilclay out on the hills tonight, so maybe that and the heat will help them.

I planted out the parsley seedlings next to the plants from last year. Those are starting to flower. I need to read up on that (do I want them to flower or not?), so for the time being I’ve been pinching off the flower buds.

The 3 garlic plants are still there…I really wish I could see what was happening to them underground!

Finally, I planted out the marigolds. I planted them all around the border of the garden, and a few on the interior around the tomatoes. I can’t wait for them to grow and bloom, they look so pretty out there.