BOOM!

Between the rain a few days ago, and being totally unavailable in between, it's been five days since we've been out to the garden. It was during this time that this garden did what all gardens do after a month or so--they explode.

These are the center beds of Tomatoes, facing West. You can't even see the beds anymore.



This is the Southwest corner of the garden. The perimeter bed in the foreground is filled with Butternut Squash, the perimeter bed on the left side is chock full of Cucumbers, and the bed in the middle of the picture are the Yellow Squash. You will notice the wooden structure around the Squash bed. These are too keep the very large leaves pointing upward, which keeps the walkway clear and also happens to route rainwater down to the roots of the plants.



Speaking of Yellow Squash, here is the first little Zephyr! This one should be ready to pick and eat in about a week or so. They grow pretty fast.

After getting over the shock of how big everything got--we still haven't had time to put up the vegetable condos around the tomatoes--Elaine and I got to work finishing the irrigation system.

Here is the lovely and talented Elaine, securing the irrigation hose. She is cutting up wire clothes hangers, bending them into a horseshoe shape, and sticking them into the ground to keep the hoses down. While she was busy doing that, I finished punching holes in the rest of the tubing. Once we got all that taken care of, we turned on the main valve by the house and the sweet sound of leaking hoses filled the air. We spent about another 45 minutes making sure that the holes were facing down into the beds, rather than shooting up into the air, and then we called it a day.

We also found another welcome surprise in the form of three very long soaker hoses. These will be used to irrigate the cabbages and kohlrabi that are on the outside of the fence. Once we get a splitter valve, we'll be able to hook these into the system.