Some Changes in the Garden

Sorry it's been a while. Life has been hectic, especially the last week. I have been taking tons of pictures, intending to update the blog, yet haven't found the time to actually do it.

Last weekend, I FINALLY got around to doing some of the replanting in the garden. The green and wax beans had given their all and it was time for them to come out. I went ahead and took out the snowpeas too since we'd only gotten about 1 1/2 cups of pods from it and the plant was really starting to look miserable. The temp here in southeast Texas has been in the nineties lately and snowpeas REALLY don't like the heat. The lettuce plants had all gone to seed, so they had to be ripped out too and put in the compost pile.
Before:
What a mess! The snowpeas are the tall brown things at the front of the pic. The lettuces in the back have clearly gone to seed and need to be ripped out. That cabbage was also attacked by caterpillers while we were in the Hill Country for our anniversary, and needed to come out.All the way on the right are the cucumber plants. Beside those are the green and wax beans. We got a LOT of beans from these plants and they had stopped flowering, so we figured they'd given us their all and took them out.

One of the principle ideas with Square Foot Gardening is that you never plant the same "crop" in the same square two times in a row. You want to give the soil a chance to recover whatever nutrient that particlular plant leaches from the soil before you put any back in that spot. So, here's what went where with the new plants:

Where the green and wax beans were, we now have carrots and radishes planted. Radishes in particular aren't normally a summer plant, but the cucumbers create a lot of shade, so I'm hoping we can trick the plants into thinking it's not really summer. :-)
Where the lettuces were, we now have more green beans and wax beans. The great thing about the beans is that they'll not only grow in the summer, but you can plant 9 bean plants per square foot. So, in a three foot by one foot space, I have 27 bean plants!! YUM YUM YUM!!!
Since the last cabbage was eaten by bugs and the snowpeas needed to come out, a LOT of space was freed up in the one bed. Since I figured I might never get that kind of square footage again, I broke down and planted Yellow squash and zucchini. Squashes take need roughly 9 sq ft EACH to grow and produce, which is why I wasn't planning to plant any. I only have 33 square feet total and I didn't want to commit that much space to any one plant. So, I gave each plant about 6 square feet, so we'll see how it goes.

After:
The two big spaces are where the squashes are planted. That lone plant on the left is the one carrot I managed to grow so far this year. :-) The three squares up front are the green and wax beans. To the right are some strawberry plants and the corn (still going strong with six ears growing).
It was hard to get a good pic of the other bed... in this pic you can see the empty squares to the right of the cucumbers. Next to that are the onions which are still growing like gangbusters, the marigolds which apparently LOVE the soil and have gotten stupidly big, and some of the herbs. I got tired of fighting a losing battle to keep the cilantro contained and from going to seed (it grew new flowers every single day), so I ripped it up and planted some new seeds. Hopefully we'll be back in cilantro within a month or so.

This last weekend, I had enough tomatoes to make some homemade spaghetti sauce. We got roughly 2.5 quarts of sauce, which we've already gone through. :-)
We also managed to harvest two of these:

Bell Peppers

And six of these:

Jalapenos

Yesterday, when I went out to water and weed, I also saw three of these guys and picked them (these grew in about 4 days, I kid you not. They were barely more than flowers last weekend and now they're five inches long!!):
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PICKLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I noticed this morning that the squashes and beans are already sprouting. Guess there's one good thing about the heat down here. Seeds germinate quickly! :-)

And now, I leave you with a funny pic from this past week. Hubby was laying on the couch in a spot Rion normally considers his. Daddy's head did not deter my boy at all! He just sat right down on it! I threated Hubby with murder if he moved before I got my camera. Knew you guys would appreciate the giggle! ENJOY!!!

I've got a lot more to tell you about, but this is a long post and I need to start being productive today. I'll try and get in a mid-week post in the next few days so I can catch up with all the news and info. :-) Have a good one!