Home garden update for 5 july, 2019

This garden update is an overall look at how the home garden is doing right now. We've had some hot humid weather lately, and it seems that the corn and potatoes like that kind of weather. The tomato plants in the raised bed are doing well also, now that it's warmer.

This picture was taken on July third. As you can see, the corn was indeed "knee high by the fourth of July".

The tomato plants in the raised bed are way behind the plants in the greenhouse, but that's mostly because the plants in the greenhouse had a month and a half headstart. The outdoor plants are doing well now though.

The potato patch is growing really well right now. There's a lot of purslane growing in with the potatoes right now, among other weeds. I haven't gotten in there to do the weeding yet. I have my walking boards covering a lot of the dirt between the rows to suppress the weed growth as best I can.

Here's another look at the big corn patch. I've been doing a bit of weeding on this part of the garden, so it's not too bad right now.

This is the smaller corn patch. This is a separate growing area from the rest of the garden. Most of the corn plants here are doing well, although there is more partial shade in this garden plot.

I decided a couple of weeks ago to add some aquaponics filtration to the small pond in front of front porch. I had an extra tomato plant that I didn't have room for in the garden, so I bought a planting container with no holes in the bottom and turned it into an aquaponics container. I planted the tomato plant in dirt in a coconut coir pot, and put that into a plastic net pot of the right size, and then surrounded that with hydroton expanded clay balls for the aquaponics media. This planting container is larger than the ones I was using in previous years, so there's a lot more space for the root ball as the tomato plant grows. This is not a cherry tomato plant, so it will be interesting to see what I get from it. In the past, the only tomato plants that I had success with in aquaponics were cherry tomatoes, so this will be interesting to watch. If it wasn't already July, and if I could get another planting container like this, I'd be tempted to put in a second plant and pump. The water is green enough that I think I could successfully grow 2 tomato plants from this 150 gallon pond, even though there's only 6 big goldfish in the pond. The pan under the planter is to catch any leakage from the through hull fitting that I used as the drain. I was having trouble with that at first because it wasn't tight enough to get a good seal.

One more picture for this update.
My 4 blueberry plants all made it through the winter and are doing well right now. Only 1 of the plants has blueberries this year, but I didn't expect much from the plants this year, they're still getting well established, especially after the rabbit damage from last fall before I put the chicken wire around the bushes.

That's all I have for this update, thanks for stopping by to check it out!