Todays post is an all around update of what we've been up to since we came back from vacation. We've been busy in the garden and everything is developing well! Lots of squash and tomatoes everywhere!
These big guys are doing the best they are yellow crooknecks and have about 5 green beans planted in the back behind them starting to work their way up the trellises.
These in the bed are a mix of black beauty zucchini and a honeydew hybrid. They are just starting to come on strong. As you can see I need to get more weeding done!
This bed has more squash varieties that we planted later as well as a couple more beans and some sugar snap peas to climb the bamboo. The pots surrounding are more zucchini! You can see the bed behind has some onion and smaller tomatoes in it with oregano planted along the edges. We have also planted creeping thyme along the paths that is slowly spreading year on year and replacing the grass.
The tomatoes are doing well since I topped them the other day. This pic is before I built the supports and strung up the paracord to support them.
We are getting baby tomatoes already :)
I always prefer to string tomatoes up rather than using cages or staking them with poles. Last year we used twine for the whole thing and it couldn't take the weight of all the plants when they were fruiting. So this year I've improved the design and distributed the weight. We've used paracord strung around these support posts at two heights(you cant see the top in this pic) and then we've used twine to gently wrap each tomatoes main stem. The twine will guide and support them until they are large enough to lean on the paracord and keep growing over and out. This way we've distributed the weight better and are guiding the plants to grow away from each other for better access when we need to weed or harvest the fruit! As the plants grow you just loosen the string a little and wrap it around a couple more times to support the new growth. The way we pinch out additional growth stems and encourage growth along the main stem it is possible some of these could reach up to the top string by the end of the year. 🤞
We've also been having a bunch of fun out and about lately. We spent a day over on Lake Willoughby in the Northeast Kingdom. It is Vermont's cleanest lake! It was still ice cold because its so deep but we had a blast paddling along and pausing to swim in the cold water!
We also headed up to Boyer State forest over the weekend and hiked for a few hours through the woods.
Along the way I found these mushrooms
Sunset from the river yesterday afternoon
And on a final note our morning walk today was blessed by another visit from our local Canada Geese families on the river. Mel learned his lesson from last time and stayed close and calm while we observed them and took a few pics.
Clouds on the hill this morning
The goslings are growing!!!
Someone is very very very interested in what is going on over there!
They let us get in pretty close as long as Mel was calm! He did so well!