A Peek at the Pallet Garden

Here's a look at what's growing (and what's not) in the pallet garden:

First off, let's just pretend that giant burdock is not thriving by the chair...
and the empty pots that never got planted...  Also, please ignore the creeping charlie and other weeds along the edges...  Thanks.  :)

Now, as you saw in the last update, the strawberries seems to be thriving in the pallet garden.  They have put out a steady stream of tiny berries.  Now they are putting off shoots and I am training them back into the ground.  I suspect that by fall when the lettuce is gone I will train them over to the next opening.

The chives have been cut back once already.  The lettuce also seems very happy and has already been thinned once but is ready for a serious harvest and thinning again (these pictures are from last week).  The lattice is not yet secure because I didn't end up with cucumbers to train up it but it looks good and has stayed put through a few rain storms so there it will stay until I have time to deal with it.

I seem to have a lot less bug/worm problems in the pallet garden but for some reason only the stray lettuce that was transplanted here even though they left alone the lettuce right next to it (different variety).

The broccoli starts here got hit severely.  You can see I need to add more dirt to this section - a lot - but because there is dirt and the ground beneath the pallet, I am able to plant directly into the ground between the bottom slats.

I was intentional in my strategy of planting the peppers where they are and hoped they would keep the critters from advancing from the field toward the other end of the pallet garden.  

The tops of the garlic are a bit burnt due to my irregular watering...we haven't needed it for the most part because we've had a lot of regular rain (which is why they are overly soaked here) but we did have a stretch of hot sunny days and these got burnt one afternoon.  I've decided to leave them be for now and hope they will keep growing even though the curiosity to see if they are actually forming bulbs is killing me.

To be fair, I can't take much credit for the success of this cherry tomato - it was already producing when I bought it at the end of season sale at our local greenhouse.  We've had a few handfuls to go with our salads already though and they are very tasty.

I was going to run a string trellis to the barn rafters and back down to the pallets but decided in the end to go with tomato cages instead.  These tomatoes are ones my grandma started from seed.  The bigger ones in the next row are from the greenhouse sale.

The parsley needs a severe haircut and I planted a new basil to replace the first that got zapped by the frost. Again, these are planted between larger sections of tomatoes to (hopefully) help with bug control.

The newest edition of the tub of potatoes has been slow going.  I think in the first place my layer of straw was too thick.  I have removed a bit at a time until growth started kicking back off and I will wait a while before I add more straw.  These are just regular store-bought potatoes that had started sprouting in my cupboard.  I am hoping they have enough time to still produce at least some fingerlings.  A downside I did find was that this does seem to be a refuge for spiders and I already killed a good sized wolf spider in there one day - no bare-handing it anymore on this!  

I always have helpers to check things out for me.

The view looking out to the west and the field.